


Imperfect Incantations

by treefrogie84



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dean Winchester Has Self-Esteem Issues, Depression, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mechanic Dean Winchester, Musician Dean Winchester, Polyamory, Soulmarks, Tarot, psychic Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22324504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: Dean is FINE. Sure, his soulmark has faded so much that he’ll never know it if he meets his markmate, and his entire family is more interested in sending him to every psychic who might be able to help than actually listening to what he wants, but he’s FINE. Admittedly, it’s values of fine that mostly mean depressed and alone while trying to figure out how to get his family off his back.Except the last psychic they send him to gets stuck in his head and Dean can’t quit thinking about Crowley, or his husband Castiel.
Relationships: Castiel/Crowley (Supernatural), Castiel/Crowley/Dean Winchester, Charlie Bradbury/Jo Harvelle, Rowena MacLeod/Sam Winchester
Comments: 64
Kudos: 73





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You can listen to the soundtrack I wrote this to at this spotify playlist: [Imperfect Incantation](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6yB350h7JMzbpedsh10Or3?si=Av1HbxgJQ-uVmOL41cRRTQ).
> 
> Many thanks to CinaGray and Trisscar for the beta job!

Dean settles onto the stool, tugs his sleeves down so there is no chance of anyone getting a glimpse of the wreckage of his right arm and picks up his guitar.

“Hey,” Dean rasps out, wincing at the sound of his own voice and swallowing roughly. Maybe he should have talked to someone besides a car today. “Gonna play a couple songs for you--” A shrill whistle splits the air, picked up by the microphone in the small space and echoed back through the speakers. Flinching away from the speaker feedback, Dean grimaces. “Thanks for the support.”

The song isn’t his normal sort at all, one of the old folk songs with dozens of versions every folk singer from here to the Orkneys knows, but it fits his mood.

The crowd settles down by the time he gets through the first chorus. A couple of girls in the front row are mouthing the words along with him, about Johnny and how he never should have gone to war.

He rolls from Johnny to Zeppelin's _Over the Hills and Far Away_ and then into the Beatles’ _Hey Jude_. After that, his set is done and he’s being rushed off stage to make way for the next sucker.

Sam corners him while he’s packing away his guitar.

“What was that first one? I’ve heard it but--”

Dean shrugs. “Jo handed me a bunch of old albums a few weeks back. That was one of them.” Biting his lips, he glances over the crowd skeptically. “Wasn’t a good choice for tonight.”

“Dude, it was awesome-- you never sing anything like that. You’re normally hiding behind your guitar.”

“They’re not here to hear my shitty-ass voice.” Dean shrugs again, turning to accept his tips from Benny. “Thanks, man.”

Benny waves him off, already more focused on the new poem Ava is proclaiming than Dean. Snapping the guitar case shut, Dean pushes past Sam and out the side door so he can stash it in the Impala.

“Dean, you can’t ignore me forever,” Sam insists from behind him. “Just accept the damn compliment!”

“It’s not that big of a deal, Sam. I found a song I liked, learned the chords, sang along with the radio a few times.”

“And sounded good when performing it for the first time.”

“Go back inside, Sam. You’re missing Ava’s newest masterpiece.”

Sam huffs. “I’m really not-- she was practicing in the backyard last night.”

“I bet Ro enjoyed that.” Dean tests the latch to make sure the trunk is locked tight before pocketing his keys and heading back inside. “Where is she, anyway?”

“New moon tonight and Katja had… I don’t remember. Something. So they couldn’t do coven as late as normal.”

Andrea already has a beer on the counter for Dean when they come back in, waiting next to a fresh cup of coffee for Sam. “Thanks, beautiful.” Dean grins as he grabs them and follows Sam back to the table in the corner. It’s mostly covered in books for Sam’s thesis, but there’s enough space for Dean to set his beer down across from the loveseat Sam settles onto.

Clapping automatically as Ava finishes her epic, Dean looks over the audience. It looks like it’s just the regular crowd tonight-- most of the students out celebrating the end of midterms.

Picking at the label on his beer, Dean watches the next couple of performers, waiting until enough time has passed for him to escape back to his apartment without Sam commenting.

Ro blows in before he can leave, fluttering skirts and hair, barely leaning down to kiss Sam on the cheek before tossing her cape over the open end of the couch and standing in line to get her tea.

Dean sighs inwardly and drains his beer. He’s never going to get out of here now.

Despite the temperatures outside, Rowena’s gown is cut low enough in back to showcase her soulmark, still dark and intricate. Sam glances up to watch her, a soft smile crossing his face before he flips his books closed and shuffles his mess into a tote. “Are you going to stick around long enough to talk tonight?”

“I--”

“You were getting ready to run away until Ro showed up to ruin that plan. I know you, Dean. And yeah, you leave the house for open mic night, but that’s it.”

“I go to work--”

“Where you avoid your employees as much as possible.”

“What do you want, Sam? I’m _fine_.”

“I want you to be happy!” Sam hisses. “Not just going through the motions. And I want you to take the chance before your mark fades completely.” Reaching across the table, he grabs Dean’s arm and roughly pushes the sleeve up.

The scarring-- leftovers from running into a barbwire fence as a kid-- wraps around his arm twice, spiralling up in pitted twists and rips. Even the stitches scarred, as if the barb wire hadn’t fucked him up enough. His soulmark is nearly obliterated, only a few fragments of a line still intact. It’s barely darker than a light tan already: by the time spring rolls around, it’ll be gone forever.

“You didn’t tell me it was so far gone,” Sam says quietly, glancing around like _now_ he’s worried about randos seeing it.

“Plenty of people have fulfilling lives without their soulmates, Sam.” Picking up his beer, Dean drains it and pushes to his feet. “Lay off,” he hisses harshly, trying to hide how off balance he feels.

“Oh, sit down, Dean,” Rowena insists as she perches on the edge of the couch with her teacup. “You know we only have your best interests at heart.”

“So you ambush me? In public?”

“Would you have come over if we’d asked?” Sam peers up at him through his bangs. “The only time we can reliably see you is here. I’m worried, Dean.”

“Don’t,” he warns, hand balling into a fist at his side. Another safe haven ruined. He just wanted-- Strangling the thought, he grabs his jacket and rushes out the door.

His entire life has been a shining example of what happens when he _wants_ something-- he never gets it and reaching ruins what he does have. Safer to accept what he can get, never try for anything more. Never should have started playing in public if this is what it gets him.

His shoebox of an apartment-- the living room barely big enough for a loveseat and a TV-- is cold when he gets there, a solitary lamp in the corner burning away the darkness. Dean drops his jacket and guitar on the end of the couch, safely out of tripping range and collapses face first onto his bed for a few minutes.

After a while, he drags himself back up, ditching his boots and flannel and dumping his pocket shit into a pile on the bed. Ten dollars in tips, from a decently full crowd on a Friday night.

The kitchen is barely four steps away. He grabs a beer from the fridge, popping the top off on the counter edge, and tosses the tips in the old cookie jar that acts as his piggy bank. Car money, he jokingly called it the last time someone asked, for when the Impala blows something that can’t be replaced.

Truthfully, he doesn’t know why he’s saving it, or even how much is in there. He just knows that including the tip money in his monthly budget is no better way to make sure it dries up completely. Because that’s how his luck works, how his luck has _always_ worked. Assume something, someone, will be there, and they won’t.

So he doesn’t spend as much time with Sam as he used to-- that’s how things work. They grew up and apart. Sam found his place in the world, got a degree, found someone who’s soulmark complemented his own, is working yet another degree. There’s not much space left for a near deadbeat older brother. Sam outgrew him.

It’s fine.

Dean doesn’t know what it would be if it wasn’t fine, so it must be.

Dropping his empty beer into the sink to deal with in the morning, Dean gets ready for bed.

In the yellow light of the bathroom, he can’t see the faded remains of his soulmark at all. Which is… something. It’s not like he’s spent a lot of time looking at it lately anyway. Fall is good for that. If Sam hadn’t said something…

If Sam hadn’t said something, it would have faded away with the rest of his summer tan without him even noticing. It would have been better, if that had happened. Would have finally killed the lingering hope of maybe.

Maybe the person who fit with him would realize. Twenty-five years too late, but whatever, Dean’s not… They rejected him, sight unseen. By now, they’ve found someone else who can fill in their soulmark. He just needs to accept it. There’s no one out there for him.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean is still nursing his coffee on the couch, half dressed and glaring at the floor, when Rowena knocks perfunctorily on the door and lets herself in.

“Still abed, Dean Winchester?” She tsks before settling on the edge of the couch next to him. “I expected better.”

“What the fuck, Ro?” Dean watches the door warily for Sam-- they’re almost never far apart, and if Rowena’s here, then Sam is almost certainly close behind. “You can’t just waltz in!”

“I can, and did.” She raises a delicate eyebrow in his direction. “Come now, Dean. Drink up, we have things to do.”

“Isn’t that what you have Sam for? Saturday morning market or whatever?”

“Samuel has his own tasks he needs to take care of today, which means you’ll be accompanying me.”

Hunching over his coffee, he growls quietly. “Saturdays are _my_ time, Ro.”

“Your plans for today were moping around your apartment and the laundromat. Maybe a trip to the grocery store for more depressing frozen pizza and the pisswater you call beer.”

“Ro--”

“You’re a strapping young man, Dean. Now act like it.”

He recognizes that tone of voice-- he won’t get anywhere arguing with her. Pushing himself to his feet with a grunt, he passes Rowena his coffee and snatches some clean-ish clothes from his room before barricading himself in the bathroom to get ready.

They make an odd pair walking to the city market. Rowena’s exchanged last night’s gown for a pair of slacks and a flowing blouse under a suit jacket, while Dean’s jeans have grease stains and a hole in the knee and his flannel is threadbare at the cuffs and elbows. He towers over her-- not quite a foot-- but somehow, even on the sidewalk, she sucks up all the attention, leaving him barely a shadow.

She bypasses the normal venders, barely waving at the folks manning the tables, like she and Sam don’t get most of their vegetables from here every week. A few she lets know that Sam will be along eventually, but for the most part, Rowena just sweeps through the crush.

Dean stumbles along in her wake, a manservant who’s only use is carrying things. He resents the comparison as soon as it occurs to him, but it’s accurate, even if it is unflattering.

Queen Rowena. He’s called her that, teasingly, for years now, but it never stops being true. She commands the room in a way very few other people are capable of.

“Ro-wena,” calls someone inside the shop on the far end of the market, breaking Ro’s name into two distinct syllables. “Might as well come in, I can feel you just fine.”

“Clea, my dear,” Rowena titters, pushing her handbag into Dean’s arms. Lifting the curtain that half covers the entrance, she ducks inside, leaving Dean outside, watching the crowds that swirl and move through the shops. The noise-- people chatting as they shop, picking up their groceries for the week, asking questions about the spices at the Arabic grocery next door, waiting for po’ boys or beignets at the New Orleans cafe a few doors down…

The market is a mishmash, shops from every corner of the globe shoved into a series of permanent structures on the outside of the horseshoe with a shelter in the center for the seasonal vendors. It’s a clash of humanity and Dean loves it.

“Dean, come along,” Rowena orders, sticking her head out from behind the curtain. “Clea has… agreed… to help with this.”

“What are you doing, Rowena?” Dean asks warily, too loud in the sudden quiet as the curtain drops behind him. “I thought I was helping with your shopping.” It’s summer’s day warm inside, humid and smelling of old wax and incense despite the chill outside.

Clea looks up at him from her seat, dozens of necklaces jingling against her brown shoulders. “Have a seat, Dean.” Clea kicks out the chair across from her, barely looking up from the complicated-looking tarot reading in front of her.

Rowena chuckles. “I’m fully capable of doing my own shopping, Dean. I’ll meet you back here in a bit. Wrangling Winchesters is hungry work.” She’s gone before Dean has a chance to twist back around, leaving him to stare around the tiny room while Clea does… whatever it is she’s doing.

Dean feels like the room should be dark, but it’s not. Brightly lit from hidden lamps, the knick-knacks covering every flat surface are almost comforting. Skulls peer out from behind candles-- maybe real, maybe not, but human either way-- with bunches of herbs and small jars gathered around them.

Clea hmms quietly as she finishes her reading. “Rowena told me a bit-- said Samuel is worried that you haven’t found your mark-mate yet.”

Dean snorts, kicking his chair up onto the back legs and crossing his arms. “Sam needs to worry about his own business. I’m fine.”

“Clearly,” Clea says dryly, rubbing her hands together. “All the same, Red said she’d owe me a favor for this, and that’s worth a lot more than a measly reading for something she can do herself.”

Dean’s eyes dart up to meet hers before skittering away. “This isn’t worth Ro owing you a debt.”

“She and I have been trading favors back and forth for years, young man. This is just one in a long line.” She snorts, holding out a hand with an impatient motion. “She said you were ‘interesting.’ I’ll judge for myself.”

Hesitantly, he rocks forward-- back onto all four legs-- and places his hand in hers, looking anywhere but at her grip.

She looks at it for a few minutes, tracing lines and the edges of his calluses before muttering something, too low for him to hear, and releasing his hand. “Well, I wasn’t expecting Red to be _understating_ things.”

“I’ll get out of your hair then,” Dean snaps, unnerved and starting to his feet. “You did your best--”

“Sit down.” Clea rocks to her feet. “I’ve barely even gotten started. Ditch a layer or two. If I’m going to find your mate, I need to see what I’m working with.”

Dean collapses back into his chair with a wince. “I don’t know what Ro told you, but you’re not the first palm reader I’ve talked to. None of them have been able to get anything useful.”

“They’re not me,” she shoots back fiercely. “Smoosh these around. _Don’t_ take them out of the bag.” She shoves a medium-gray canvas bag into his hands and watches as he rolls the contents around, clicking against each other. Not bone, he thinks, but wood. Plastic maybe, but unlikely. He keeps it up for several minutes before he feels like enough time has passed for him to be ‘done’ and lets it rest in his cupped palm.

“Are you actually done, or do you just think enough time has passed that I’ll leave you alone?”

Dean shrugs. “Does it matter?”

She glares at him until he lowers his gaze and gives the bag a few more half-hearted manipulations.

“Done.”

Pouring the tokens-- wood after all-- from the bag, Clea looks from them to him and back. “What did you do?”

“You saw what I did!”

Frowning, she twists a necklace around a finger while she prods the tokens with her other hand. “People who intentionally screw with things still end up with more sensical readings than this.”

“Like I said,” Dean sighs. “Palm readers haven’t ever been able to get anything useful. Neither has any psychic I’ve talked to, witch… anyone who might have the slightest idea. It took me a long time to give up, longer than Sam and Ro know. But it’s time to face facts.”

Clea nods thoughtfully, sweeping the tokens back into the bag and closing it with a jerk. “You’ve not even begun to face facts, Dean Winchester. You’ve given up on being happy.”

“I don’t care. They chose someone else, I wish them well. Always have.” And maybe one day he’ll be able to hope for their happiness without the shadow of bitterness eating at his heart. Not that it matters, in fact, it’s probably better that they have no way to know that some stranger is wishing them well. Fewer chances of his luck impacting them that way. “Fading is not the end of happiness.”

“You’ve let it be.”

He snorts. “Easier to find a partner when they can stand to look at you with your shirt off,” Dean says. “Thanks for the help, good luck with the whole… thing.”

She tilts her head, reaching for the deck of tarot cards from where they rest on the table. Shuffling them twice, she holds out the deck. “Pick three.”

Rolling his eyes, Dean takes the deck and spreads them across the table between them, choosing three cards at random, even though he knows what he’ll pull. Ten swords stab a lonely figure lying across the road; the Hermit peers at his lamp from beneath his hood, upside down; a shrouded figure glares at five cups, their contents spilled and draining into a nearby river.

Bleak and depressing, their meanings plenty clear even without knowing the first thing about tarot. Left for dead; insight lost; destruction of everything held dear, probably due to his own actions.

Clea pauses for a moment, looking from the cards spread across the table to Dean and back again. “Well, now.”

“Same cards, over and over. Pointless.” Just like him. And now he’s wasting her time, taking up valuable minutes she could be using to work some other poor fool.

Clea nods absently, glancing at the gray canvas bag and his fisted hand. Abruptly, she pushes out of her chair, and steps over to an old apothecary cabinet, digging through a series of tiny drawers for something. Snatching a slip of paper out, she glances over it again with a frown before grabbing a pen. “You need a proper psychic for this, Dean Winchester. Well, a psychic who dabbles with craft, not a witch who dabbles with divination.”

“I don’t _need_ jack shit. Folks need to leave me alone.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, dearie,” Rowena says from behind him, a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. “Crowley, then, Clea?”

“Unless you know of another one.” She rubs her hands together briskly before reaching for a pen. “You know he won’t work for the cost of a favor--”

“Especially for me, I’m aware. Dean will have something he wants, I’m sure.”

“Dean is right here, and I’m not gonna go see another psychic just so he can tell me the same thing everyone else has.”

“And what is that?” Rowena asks sharply with a peeved glance at Clea.

“I should have died, I’m alone, and it’s my fault.” Dean gestures towards the table, where the cards are still spread. “I’m done, Ro. Tell Sam and stay out of it.” He roughly pushes past her, knocking into her bag, and back into the rainbow of humanity outside.

He lets the crowd guide him, dragging him away from Rowena and Clea, past the other shops, and spitting him out at the parking lot. Dean takes a deep breath before marching back towards his apartment.

His irritation runs out about the same time as he unlocks his door, slipping inside. It’s not like he’s ever told Sam and Ro the lengths he’s gone to to search for his mark-mate. He’s just withdrawn more and more, accepting that the most important people in his life don’t think of him the same way.

Easier to hide away from the hurt.

Shying away from the reminder, Dean throws his laundry into a bag to take to the laundromat, grabbing a book and his pile of quarters. Time to shake this whole morning off and actually accomplish something useful.


	3. Chapter 3

“You want to tell me what’s got your panties in a bunch?” Jo demands at lunch on Monday. “You’ve been bitchy all day.”

“I have not,” Dean bites out, dropping his lunch on the break room table and shrugging off the top half of his jumpsuit. “And if Garth didn’t want someone to point out where he fucked up, he shouldn’t have.”

“You yelled at him for ten minutes for not latching an air filter correctly, Dean. That’s four times as long as it took for you to fix it-- _and_ the customer wasn’t even here yet, so we lost nothing.”

“And what happens when it’s the oil filter? Or a set of spark plugs put in out of order?”

“Then we catch it before it leaves the shop. That’s the point of doing those checks. Not for you to abuse your employees.”

“Jo--”

“Nope. Don’t ‘Jo’ me. What is the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Sam and Rowena have decided that I need to find my mark-mate.”

“I thought…” she trails off with a guilty glance before shaking her head. “None of my business.”

“You’re right, it’s not,” Dean snaps, grabbing his lunch. “I’ll be in the office. Try not to let Garth fuck up anyone’s cars on our dime.”

He’s not changed the office much since Bobby passed-- cleaned it some, forced the files into an organization system that works for him instead, but it’s still overwhelmingly the same dark wood covered in greasy fingerprints. A photo of the three of them-- Sam’s not more than fourteen, in the middle of his first growth spurt; Bobby glaring out from under his worn trucker’s hat while Dean half-hides behind them both-- hangs on the wall next to the monitor, one of the last photos they have of all of them.

Dean collapses into the chair, pushing the keyboard away and burying his head in his hands. Everyone just needs to leave him alone, stop worrying about him. He’s fine, just peachy, with years, decades even, of life stretching out in front of him. Plenty of time to watch his life move on without him.

That’s how it works, after all.

But a small and bitter part of his heart won’t let it go. Clea and Rowena both sounded so certain that this Crowley guy will be able to at least read something useful.

Dean’s peanut butter and jelly sticks in his throat, choking him with the realization that he’s going to call the guy anyway to set up an appointment. Not to find his match-- they’ve made it abundantly clear they want nothing to do with him-- but to make sure they’re happy. No idea what he’ll do if it turns out they’re not, but since they’re far away from him, he’s sure they are.

_I’ll call him_ , he texts Rowena. _No promises beyond that._

She sends him back a photo of an old fashioned rolodex card, yellowed and stained, with Crowley’s contact information printed on it.

_You deserve so much more than to be alone_ , Sam texts a moment later.

Looking at it, Dean bites his lip but doesn’t respond. Sam’s way too concerned about him as it is. He forces down the rest of his sandwich before picking his phone back up and punching in the number Ro sent.

“Angel’s Nature, how may I help you?” The man who answers the phone already sounds exasperated, like he’s dealt with fifteen idiots already today.

“Uh, I’m looking for Crowley?” Dean blurts out, caught off guard.

“Well, if you’re looking for him, I might suggest using your eyes instead of the phone,” the man snarks, his voice somehow getting even raspier. “As it stands, he is with a client at the moment and cannot be disturbed.”

Dean aborts his nod, explicitly aware that the other man can’t see him. “Yeah, that’s what I meant. Can I set up an appointment or something? I was told he can help.”

“He doesn’t work for free,” the other man warns. “And referrals incur additional costs.”

Thinking of the cookie jar stuffed with cash on top of his fridge, Dean grunts. “That’s not a problem.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line before Dean faintly hears the scratching of a pencil on paper. “Tonight then. Seven-forty-five.”

Dean nods invisibly again. “Got it. See you then.” Hanging up, he slumps back in his chair before picking his phone back up and looking at the address. Nearly halfway across the state. Fuck.

Breathing out, he scrubs his hands through his hair, yanks his jumpsuit back on and heads back out to the garage, where a mid-eighties Toyota truck awaits his displeasure.

A few hours later he’s buttoning up the Toyota and glancing around before leaving Garth to finish up an oil change on an SUV and Jo to whatever computer aided magic she’s doing with a new Porsche. “Jo, you good to close up?” He barely waits for her nod before heading back to the breakroom and stripping out of his coverall.

He’s on the road in thirty minutes-- even including a run home to grab the cash-- heading towards the interstate and letting the Impala eat up the miles between him and this psychic. Cracking the window to let in some fresh air, comfortably cool for mid-November, he presses a random cassette into the player and relaxes for what feels like the first time in months. Drumming on the wheel along with Bonham, Dean revels in the possibilities.

No one knows where he’s going, what he’s doing. If Crowley doesn’t tell him anything useful, he can just keep driving, live out of his car again like he and Sam did when they were kids, just never stop. California’s nice this time of year. Chasing a never ending summer the way Dad chased Mom. He can just disappear, stop worrying everyone else.

By the time it’s time to turn off the interstate, he’s listened to Zepp IV three times and he’s starting to get apprehensive again. The rain that’s started pouring down doesn’t feel like a good omen either.

The shop is next to impossible to find-- Dean doesn’t even see the sign the first time he drives past, watching the clock tick over minute by minute until he’s late and wasted all this time and gas and…

He spots the sign in the upper story of one of the buildings, finally, with an arrow that he thinks points down a nearby alley? Throwing the Impala into a parking space, he rushes down the alley, pushing past the dumpsters and trash cans, trying to find the entrance.

Blue and yellow neon shines through a window, combining with a bare lightbulb to illuminate a red door in the alcove. Breathing out a sigh of relief, Dean carefully lets himself in without also letting in the rain and chill.

Much like Clea, the shelves and cubbies of the tiny shop are stuffed with candles and bones and other things he can’t easily identify. The only modern intrusion is a tablet on the glass sales cabinet.

“Can I help you?” the man behind the counter rumbles, not quite smoker’s gravel. He’s gorgeous, not that Dean should be paying attention to that-- the wedding ring on his finger glints clearly even in the low light.

Dean blinks at him for a couple seconds before shaking himself. “Uh, sorry. I called this afternoon to set up an appointment with Crowley?”

The man glances at a clock on the wall as it ticks over to seven-fifty-two. “Fortunately, his current client is running long.” Gesturing towards a chair nearly hidden in the clutter, he tilts his head. “He’ll be along shortly.” Going back to his tablet, he taps at it, impatience clear.

Dean settles onto the chair, gingerly, waiting for the thin cane legs to collapse under him at any second. He half expects to have a questionnaire shoved into his hands, checking his mental and financial wellbeing before Crowley spends time and effort on Dean, but nothing appears to be forthcoming.

Maybe this guy is on the up and up, actually psychic and using it to make a living instead of straight conning folks. It’s possible, he supposes. Pulling out his phone, Dean makes an abortive attempt to check his texts and email before Counter Guy glares at him again, displeasure clear, and he shoves his phone back in his pocket.

The dark-haired man glances over when the chair creaks under Dean’s weight, frowning slightly. “If you need to stretch, you’re welcome to do so. You’re not required to stay in the chair.”

Dean’s still working out how to respond to that-- he’s not sure if he should thank him for the polite fiction or just get up to stretch-- when a young woman pushes out from behind a drapery he didn’t even realize covered a doorway. She stops dead as soon as she sees Dean, raising her chin and straightening up, almost daring him to comment on the mascara running down her cheeks or how pale she looks.

Dean looks away, focusing on the butterflies pinned to a velvet backing in the curio cabinet next to him. He can still see her in the reflection of the glass, but she takes the out, hurriedly dropping an envelope on a nearby table before ducking out into the rain.

Counter Guy slips past Dean to pick it up, a calculated look in his eye before sighing and tucking it away. He glances at Dean and then the curtain before passing through it, leaving Dean unattended.

He can hear, barely, a quick, brutal, argument in harsh whispers, but the heavy curtain muffles the words into obscurity before he can figure out if he should pretend he’s not eavesdropping.

“Cas, there’s a limit--” the other voice abruptly cuts off as the dark-haired man, Cas apparently, pushes the curtain aside and marches into the front room. “He’s here already?”

“Miss Hinton’s appointment ran long,” Cas replies dryly, without mentioning that Dean was late as well. “You agreed to take another appointment several days a week. Thus Mr. Winchester here.”

Dean starts. “I never gave you my name…”

Crowley, and it has to be him that followed Cas out in a black suit-- black on black, even, with a silvery-gray tie-- snorts. “Like you’re not mentally screaming it every chance you get with your big black car and mechanic’s shop bearing your name.”

Dean stares at him. “I’ll give you both of those, because it’s easy enough to look up with my phone number, but dude, I’m not screaming my name.”

Crowley looks at him, laughter in his eyes and the ends of his mouth lifting slightly into something that might be a smile. “I wouldn’t expect so. Maybe later?” Leaning over, he kisses Cas’s cheek before gesturing Dean ahead of him. “After, of course.”

Dean shakes his head, but passes through the curtain and down the short dark hallway. There’s a door on either side, both pulled shut, the polished wood gleaming faintly in the light from the room beyond, but nothing to indicate where the doors lead.

Dean drags his brain away from speculating, emerging into Crowley’s workspace. Wall sconces throw light upwards while mirrors reflect it around the room. The faux Victorian decorations of the shop outside give way to something much more utilitarian in here. Several IKEA bookcases line the walls, filled with books and tools of Crowley’s trade along with more practical concerns-- Dean spots at least two teapots and something that might be a very fancy electric kettle.

“Go ahead and take a seat,” Crowley says behind him. “You spoke to Cas on the phone earlier?”

“Yeah. A friend of my sister-in-law said you might be able to help me.” Dean swallows, eyes darting around the room as he sits gingerly in a heavy ornate chair-- clearly a refugee from the Victoriana out front-- at the plain wooden table. “My mark-mate--”

Crowley rolls his eyes, the faint smile dropping out entirely, and reaches across the table to snatch up Dean’s hand. “Who sent you?”

“Clea. She works out of the--”

“I know who she is,” Crowley snaps, glancing down at Dean’s palm. “We have… professional differences.”

Dean nods silently, feeling like he doesn’t need to be here at all, like Crowley made up his mind as soon as Dean opened his mouth.

“Well, she didn’t get anything off your palm.” Crowley drops his hand onto the table roughly. “No one can get anything off that.” Pushing away from the table, he looks at one of the shelves and picks up a couple of wooden boxes with symbols Dean doesn’t recognize painted on the top.

Dean jerks his hand back, dropping it into his lap, and glares at Crowley’s back. “And you think you’ll be able to find something that will work?”

“She’s good, but I’m Crowley.”

Dean stares at him, resisting the urge to walk out. Clea and Ro didn’t need to tell him flat out that this jackass is his last chance, he knows that perfectly well. It doesn’t really help though, when he just wants to accept defeat and go.

Never should have allowed Ro to talk him into this. The reward isn’t worth the risk.

Crowley drops the boxes onto the table with a clatter, setting one aside and opening the other. “I expect Clea did her quaint bone casting when your palm didn’t tell her anything. What else?”

“Wooden tokens,” Dean grits out. “Not bones. And tarot, although she didn’t seem happy to have to use that one.”

“She wasn’t,” Crowley agrees shortly. “Let's see what we get then.” Barely looking at Dean, he shuffles the cards briefly and pulls three out.

Dean chuckles grimly before he can stop himself. The images are a little bit different, more modern and less detailed, but he doesn’t need to recognize the art for the meaning to stay clear. Spilled cups, a lonely man on a mountain, a sword in the back. “Alone again. I suppose this is where you’ll tell me that you can’t help me either.”

“You--”

“I’m nearly forty, Crowley,” Dean snaps. “I’m intimately aware of how limited marks can be and how confusing I am, _apparently_ , to divination.” Recklessly, he pushes away from the table, ignoring the bang of the chair against a bookcase, and ducks back to the front, already digging into his coat pocket.

He pauses for a moment, weighing a year’s worth of tips from open mic night in his hand, before dropping on the side table, the same spot Miss Hinton did earlier. He glances around briefly, long enough to see that Cas is truly missing, before crossing the room in angry strides. Jerking the door open, he’s greeted by a blast of cold rain to the face before he can pull the door shut behind him.

Crowley shouts something after him from the doorway, the words lost under the rain and thunder.

Dean ignores him, hurriedly unlocking the car door to slide inside before he gets soaked through.

He should drive back home, back to Lawrence and reality, back to his empty apartment. It’s not even that late, barely eight thirty, he can be home by midnight and just go back to his life in the morning. Rain drums on the roof of the Impala, drowning out the cassette still playing. Flexing his hands on the wheel, Dean recklessly backs out of his parking spot and heads back towards the highway and the liquor store he saw near there.


	4. Chapter 4

Thin morning light peeks through the thin motel curtains. Dean tries to roll away from it, flopping over from his drunken sprawl, and falls off the bed.

Face pressed into the grimy carpet, he groans. It takes a couple minutes to get his limbs into working order, pushing himself up to slump heavily against the bed, and hiding from the sun. Tilting his head back, he presses firmly into the bed frame, hoping the cold metal across his back will dissipate some of the headache.

Right on cue-- because this is his fucking shitbag life-- his phone starts blaring from where it’s digging into his hip. Pulling it out of his pocket, Dean slaps it into silence before forcing himself to his feet. He smells like drunk sweat and whiskey, which matches how he feels, so he stumbles into the bathroom for a quick shower and getting as cleaned up as he can.

He avoids looking at his arm as much as he can, doesn’t want to see how badly his mark has faded right now when it’ll only drive him right back into the mostly empty bottle of whiskey sitting on the back of the toilet.

His phone rings again as he’s pulling his shirt on. “Yeah, Sammy?” he forces out with a wince.

“Congratulations!” Sam explodes like the giant excitable moose he is. “I’m so proud of you for taking the risk--”

“The fuck are you talking about,” Dean grunts.

“You were going to see that psychic right? And then you didn’t show up for work this morning and--”

Dean glares at his phone for a long moment before hitting the end call button. It starts ringing again almost immediately and he sends Sam’s call directly to voicemail, and the next before he silences it. Getting cleared out the room takes no time at all, just long enough to make sure he’s got his pocket shit and dropping his still wet jacket and mostly empty whiskey bottle in the backseat of the Impala.

“You okay, dude?” the guy at the motel counter asks. “Check out’s not for a few more hours if you want to get some more sleep. You look pretty rough.”

Dean snorts, sliding the key across the counter. “Won’t get less rough with more sleep. Might as well get back to face the music.”

The guy frowns, but slides the paperwork across the counter for Dean to sign. “Whoever she is, she’s not worth it, dude. And I doubt she fits your mark as well as you think.”

“Thanks for the insight,” Dean grinds out. “I’ll be sure to take it into account.” Of course, he then proceeds to trip over the curb and prove the guy right, but what’s another person thinking he’s an idiot?

He can join the club, right behind everyone else Dean’s fucked up and over.

Dry swallowing a couple of painkillers, he closes his eyes and waits for them to kick in before trying to find a gas station. Gas, coffee, maybe something for breakfast.

Sam calls, again, as Dean’s getting the pump going to fill the Impala.

“So… you didn’t meet your soulmate last night?” Sam blurts out as soon as the call connects.

“Jesus, Sammy. No. It was a bust, the same way it always is, the same way I knew it would be.”

“Ro wouldn’t send you on a wild goose chase, Dean. If she says this guy can help, he can.”

“It doesn’t matter. He didn’t want to.” Dean sighs, closing his eyes and leaning heavily against the Impala. He doesn’t think Ro would deliberately set out to screw him, no. But forget to include the secret passcode or call ahead to let them know she has a personal stake in whatever Crowley tells Dean? Yeah. That she’d do and not even think twice. “I’m getting on the road home, I’ll be there around lunch. Can you let Jo know?”

“Call her yourself,” Sam says. “She’s worried sick.”

“Right. Awesome.” Another person he’s disappointed.

“And you’re coming over for dinner tonight.”

Dean wants to refuse. Wants to tell Sam to get away and stay away, before Dean can leak all over his happiness, but they’ve done this dance before. “Sure, Sammy.” Giving in is the fastest way to get off the phone. Who knows, maybe by dinner Sam will have forgotten, or Dean’ll be able to make his usual excuses so he can stay home. But that’s hours away. “Whatever you want,” he adds, defeated.

Sam keeps talking, but Dean tunes him out, grunting at the right points before Sam hangs up.

Hanging up the pump, Dean steels himself before braving the convenience store.

The attendant grunts when the bell rings, barely looking up from his cup of coffee and paper as Dean beelines past him to the coffee pots. Another man, also wearing the blue employee vest, is glaring at the warmers, waiting for a fresh pot to finish brewing. Sighing, Dean glances at the level in the pot before shaking his head and searching for the snack food aisle.

He looks for longer than he should before grabbing a six pack of dry chocolate covered mini-donuts and an apple ‘pie’ and wandering back to the coffee, hoping it’s done. If not, he’ll grab a soda and say fuck it, anything to get out of this town.

“Dean, correct?” the guy hovering over the coffee asks, pouring some into a cheap travel mug. “You--”

“Who the fuck are you?” Dean demands. He looks familiar, somehow, but he’s never been in this gas station before, and he certainly doesn’t know anyone named ‘Steve.’

“We met last night,” he says, pressing the lid of his mug into place. “At Crowley’s.”

Cas. Squinting, Dean tilts his head before giving up. “Awesome. He can’t bilk enough folks out of their savings to pay you a living wage?”

Cas-Steve shrugs. “We like to have a steady income in addition to what Crowley brings in.” He glances at the empty disposable cup in Dean’s hands. “Not worried about the earth, then?”

Dean bites back his immediate response, pushing the lever to fill his cup and slapping a lid on it. He never has to see this asshole again, he can just pay for his meager breakfast and leave.

Cas-Steve follows him up to the register, mutters something to the other guy who escapes with coffee immediately. “Is that all?”

“Already paid for the gas,” Dean responds gruffly. “So yeah.”

Cas nods, ringing up the snacks and coffee and reading off the total. “I understand Crowley was off-putting last night--”

“Off-putting. Yeah.” Dean scoffs. “That’s bullshit. Why the fuck are you apologizing for him?”

“I--” Cas starts

“Whatever.” Slapping the last of his cash on the counter, Dean grabs his purchases and marches out to his car. Jerking the door open, Dean drops into the Impala’s driver’s seat. He takes several deep breaths, trying to keep from screaming.

The other attendant looks over from where he’s pouring fluid into the washer basin and snorts. “You’re not the first. All you’ve got to do is get home.”

“What?”

“You went to see the ‘Great and Amazing Crowley’ last night, right? You’ve got the look. Whatever he told you… it may or may not be true, I don’t know. But I do know that you just need to get home and you’ll feel less like throttling all of humanity.”

“Right. Awesome.” Dean nods and pulls the door shut. “Have a good day.”

He does regain his equilibrium on the drive at least.

Jo looks like she wants to say something when he walks in, something undoubtedly teasing and heartfelt, but the grin drops off her face when Dean stalks by. “How’d it… go?”

“As well as I expected it to,” Dean barks, before shaking his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay…” she starts. “You know you can talk to me about shit, right?”

He does know, but still has no words for it. Even if he did, he doesn’t think he could handle the pity on her face he knows would be there.

She doesn’t-- Jo doesn’t even know the full extent of how badly he’s fucked up. He’ll enjoy her well meaning sympathy for exactly as long as it exists and then he’ll… He’ll ruin it, because she’ll know that it’s not that he never met his mark mate, he’s met them and apparently destroyed any chance of being with them without a word.

“Dean?”

“Don’t worry about it. Give me a few minutes to get changed and I’ll be right there.” Shaking himself, he forces a smile to his face-- obviously fake, but it’s the effort that counts-- and searches for something to distract her. “Balthazar Auclair is bringing in his new one for a check up today, isn’t he?” Not that he has any idea why Auclair is doing that-- the man can definitely afford a higher quality shop, but if he wants to keep supporting Dean, he’s not going to turn him away, even if his car is ridiculous.

She’s still concerned, but lets herself be distracted by the idea of getting her hands under the hood of a brand new, all-electric, more computer-than-engine car. But then, that’s why she works here, so she can deal with the computers while he deals with moving parts.

Dean manages to hide under a succession of Toyotas and Fords for most of the day, barely responding to Garth and ignoring Jo’s raptures over her new plaything. He’s buttoning up a hose replacement on a Jeep when Garth calls out that it’s long past five and he’s going home.

Waving him off, Dean drops the keys of the Jeep into the envelope with the paperwork and starts to reach for the next when Jo slams her hand on the stack.

“Nope. Go home. Shower. _Eat something_.”

“I’m fine, Jo.”

“Sure. Just like Darth Vader after Jedi.”

“I’m not dead.”

“Just kinda wish you were? Yeah, I picked that up.”

“I’m not-- Go home, hang out with your girlfriend,” Dean orders, defeated. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The shop is silent after she leaves, and dark with only a few lights on. The shadows grow and move, a familiar dance that happens every night. Dean sits at his desk and watches it for a long time before flipping on his computer and starting on the record keeping.

The rest of the week follows almost the same pattern-- Dean is at the shop before Jo or Garth even think about showing up and he’s there long after they go home. He’s pushing himself too hard, is avoiding things he can’t think about yet by working himself to the bone, but what else is he supposed to do?

Sam calls at some point-- Dean’s lost track of days by then-- to yell at him for not showing up to dinner, and Dean must make the appropriate noises because he doesn’t call back. They leave him alone, all of them, let him retreat into work and exhaustion.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean’s watching the shadows of the shop again, trying to convince himself to go home, when Sam bursts in, Dean’s guitar case in one hand and a clean shirt in the other. “Get up, jerk. I can’t let you do this anymore.”

“I’m doing my books, Sam. The way I’m supposed to.”

“Like that isn’t a cry for help itself,” Sam snaps. “You’re here all day and most of the night, to the point where you’ve run out of procrastination work.” He throws the shirt at Dean. “Put that on, we’re going to Benny’s and you’re going to do something besides mope.”

“So you’re gonna shove me on stage in front of a bunch of assholes who’ve seen me play every week for a year? What the fuck is that going to accomplish?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. It gets you out of the house and out of the garage and _that_ I do care about. Hell, it might even make you happy.”

Glaring, Dean grabs the shirt off the desk and turns his back on Sam, peeling off his sweaty work shirts and pulling on the clean one. “You don’t have to stay. I can get myself to the cafe without help.”

“Yeah, you’d think that, since it’s barely two miles away. Except the last two times we let you drive yourself someplace, you never showed.”

What? “Look, I’m sorry I missed dinner Tuesday. I wasn’t paying attention to the time and by the time I left here, it was like ten.”

“Tuesday. Right, Tuesday. When you hung up on me, then didn’t answer the phone, and didn’t show up? Or how about yesterday, when you said you’d meet me for lunch and, stop me if you see a theme here, _didn’t show up_.”

Dean swallows, picking up his guitar. “I don’t know what you want from me, Sammy.”

“I don’t know either, but this isn’t it.” Sam sounds lost, barely above a whisper. “I want you to actually be around. Not just going through the motions.”

Dean nods, gesturing for Sam to lead the way out of the shop while he locks up. “Just… stop with worrying about my mark. I’ve tried everything, and none of it accomplished a damn thing.”

“So you’re going to be alone for the rest of your life? Just going to accept it?”

“If the best psychic Ro and her friends can send me to wants nothing to do with me, convinced that I’m--” he cuts himself off with a shrug. “Marks fade, Sam. You meet people who might be a good match, but first impressions or what-the-fuck-ever.”

Sam watches him over the roof of his car, waiting for Dean to drop his guitar in the backseat. “You don’t actually believe that, right? That you met your fucking soulmate and they didn’t like you?”

Is there another option? News to Dean. Forcing a grin he doesn’t really feel, he smirks at Sam. “I’m a bit of an acquired taste.”

A childhood of living in each other’s pockets means Sam can’t dispute it, for all that he probably wants to. But someone had to be the loud one, the one to keep bullies off their backs or teachers from looking too closely. When they were kids, it had to be Dean, letting Sam be the bookish one in the corner with straight A’s and soccer camp.

Now Sam can be the visible one, drawing attention with his degrees and beautiful partner while Dean fades into the background, barely a blip in most people’s consciousness, with no more thought or affection from his customers than they have for their toasters.

(Possibly less; they see their toasters in neutral settings, while most of them only see him when there’s something wrong with their cars, so he’s an expensive and obnoxious reminder.)

“Plenty of people like you.”

“Acquired, Sammy, not unlikable.” Dean shakes his head. “Whatever. Let’s get going, we wouldn’t want to miss the sign up sheet.”

Sam snorts, but puts the car in gear and heads downtown.

Taking Sam’s Prius does have the advantage of being able to park much closer to Benny’s. The Friday night crowd is pretty large, students gathered around their tables with coffees and beer and the occasional snack plate. More eyes than Dean’s really comfortable with watch him enter, pausing for just a moment to jot his name on the sign up sheet. Sam disappears somewhere-- probably to get his drink-- while Dean is still scanning the crowd for an empty table.

Ro and Jo are already settled at their preferred table in the corner with a glass of wine and a beer sitting between them. Ro’s writing something in a journal of some sort while Jo types a mile a minute on her laptop, probably chatting with Charlie. Glancing up, Ro smiles. “Hello, Dean. Decided to be social have we?”

“Didn’t really feel like I had a choice,” Dean says quietly, setting his guitar down at an empty edge of the table. “Sasquatch wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“I told you this was the plan,” Jo points out, eyes on her laptop screen for a few more seconds before she closes it. “I repeatedly told you, actually, that if you didn’t stop being grouchy mcgroucherson, I was going to sic Sam on you.”

Dean sighs and hunches his shoulders. “I’m gonna get a cup of coffee or something. I’ll be back.”

Andrea is already setting up the mic and chair on the tiny stage, nodding at Dean as he passes in front of the stage. Dean stands in line for a couple minutes, long enough to hand over a few bucks in cash and grab his mug. He fills it and takes several deep breaths before slowly weaving through the tables back to Rowena, Jo, and Sam.

“I talked to Benny,” Sam says. “He’s gonna put you early in the night so you have time to relax afterwards. Before you run away.”

That’s the exact opposite of what Dean wants, but apparently his family has decided he doesn’t get a choice tonight. It’s not like Dean can leave since he rode with Sam. Nodding stiffly, he huddles around his coffee and wishes, again, that Benny’d been able to get a liquor license that included whiskey. This would be less painful, probably, if the coffee was Irish.

The first couple of participants are shy and shaky first timers, filling their ten minutes with questionably performed poetry accompanied by an even more questionable ukulele. Dean’s not quite sure why Plath needs accompaniment, but whatever. Sometimes teenagers do weird things, and these two are very definitely teenagers from one of the local high schools.

Another one of the Friday night regulars does his thing-- a comedy set that Dean always rolls his eyes through-- and then Benny is announcing that it’s Dean’s turn

Pushing away the nerves with a roll of his eyes-- he’s done this before, for over a year now-- Dean picks up his guitar and gets set up on stage. He turns his brain off, doing the pre-show banter on auto-pilot while he tunes his guitar.

He doesn’t even recognize the first chord that his fingers form, until he’s halfway through the first measure and the words start coming out, unsteady and unsure while he tries to remember the lullaby his mom always sang him.

He cuts it short, the Na Na’s awkward when he’s alone up on stage, but it feels good. For the first time in a week, he doesn’t think he fucked his life up irredeemably.

Of course, he immediately fumbles the opening chords for ‘ _4+20_ ’ but recovers fast enough he doesn’t think anyone will notice except maybe Sam. His voice breaks at the last line, glancing up for the first time since his set started.

The audience, never completely silent no matter how good anyone is, watches him in rapt attention, eyes fixed on him, with barely any side talk.

Biting his lip, Dean runs a hand through his hair before bringing it back down to the frets. “Uh, Thanks for your attention? Last one is a repeat of what I did last week.” He stumbles to a stop, wincing. There’s a reason he never does introductions. He gets up here, does his thing, and then gets the fuck off stage. No one wants to hear his bullshit.

_Over the Hills_ is familiar under his fingers, one of the songs he’s been playing longest, since back when he still had illusions of being in a band, being good enough to do something with himself, of--

That’s not what he needs to be focusing on right now. Even if he knows it cold he still needs to pay attention to what he’s doing, especially if his audience is going to grant him unreal levels of engagement.

He sees a flash of something out of the corner of his eye as he finishes and climbs off the stool. It’s from the direction of Sam’s table anyway, so probably just Jo grabbing a photo for something ridiculous. If he’s lucky, he won’t come into work on Monday to his office door plastered in derp-shots of him up here tonight.

Escaping from the stage, Dean carefully packs up his guitar while the next person has their performance and does his best to deal with the shakes that have already started.

Like normal, Benny finds him after a couple minutes, pressing a handful of bills into Dean’s hand. “Nice job tonight.”

Dean shrugs. “It wasn’t anything special, Benny. You’ve seen just about every set I’ve ever done.”

“It was still a good one,” Benny quietly insists. “You should do Stills more often-- it suits you.”

Dean shrugs again and nods in defeat. “I’ll think about it.”

Benny claps his shoulder before pushing him towards the table with Sam and Ro. Dean shrugs him off, staying in the dim quiet of the corner and waiting for the post-performance crash. It doesn’t happen every time, but often enough it doesn’t shock him. It’s worse when he knows Sam’s in the audience, let alone anyone else, so this should be a _fantastic_ crash with Ro and Jo here.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean jumps at the gravelly voice before spinning around. “Cas. What are you doing here?”

“It seems Rowena--”

“She called Crowley?” Dean snorts. “Of course she did. What for? So he could invade my life and insult me here too? Am I expected to pay for the privilege again? And you came along for what? Stalking lessons?”

“I believe it’s considered traditional for spouses to travel together. Encouraged, even, when primarily for pleasure.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dean scoffs. Pushing past Cas, he leaves through the side door, heading outside and around the corner to come back in the front-- easier than trying to weave his way through the tables when someone’s performing. Sam’s just gonna have to trust that he won’t call a taxi and bail.

He _really_ wants to do that.

Except Cas is still following him, doggedly climbing stairs and nearly tripping over a buckle in the sidewalk.

“What do you want, Cas?” Dean forces the urge to start screaming down and away-- it won’t do anything, no matter how much he wants to.

“We want to speak to you, Squirrel,” Crowley says, stepping from the shadows in the outdoor seating like some sort of mob boss, complete with backlight. “Well, Feathers does. I want Clea to stop cursing my plants. I don’t need any more handicaps while working.”

“So you showed up here. You couldn’t just come to the shop, or call me-- I know you have my phone number-- you came here.” Suddenly suspicious, he shoves his hand in his pocket, feeling the number of bills. “Did you-- That was fair payment. I pay my way.”

“I’m aware,” Crowley says slowly, like he thinks Dean is an idiot.

Which, hey, might not be wrong.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean slumps, all the fight leaving him. If they want an idiot, he can be one. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Pushing past Crowley, he drops carelessly into one of the outdoor chairs, the cold metal leaching heat through his jeans. “Again, what do you want? You’ve cornered me, I can’t leave.”

Crowley watches him shrewdly before glancing at Cas. “Who told you to contact me? Clea?”

Dean shrugs. “Ro dragged me to Clea’s. Clea did her thing, said I needed to talk to you. I got your contact info off Ro though.”

“She would still have it,” Crowley mutters. “Ro is…?”

“Outlaw sister.” Dean shivers and sets his guitar down, hoping this won’t take too much longer. “Something about the law just screwing up what should already be evident.”

“That does sound like something she would spout off,” Cas points out. “Although I’m sure we could verify that it is indeed your cousin by stepping inside. Where it is much warmer.”

“Awesome, you just want to know if you know my brother’s mark-mate. Of course.” Dean gestures towards the door a few steps away. “Knock yourselves out.”

“No, I want to know why two witches directed you to me, despite knowing me.”

Dean sighs and shakes his head. “Whatever. You stalked me here, won’t tell me what you want, and are generally being obnoxious.” His heart sinks as he says it aloud-- it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does that they didn’t come to see him, that no one ever comes to see him.

Picking up his guitar, he closes his eyes for a brief, heart hurt, moment before pushing to his feet. “Do whatever you want, it’s a public coffeeshop.”

After all that, he can’t bring himself to face Sam and Ro again, well meaning efforts to get him out of the shop and to have a social life again aside. Or Jo, happily and newly in love with her own mark-mate.

It’ll be better for them if they don’t have to deal with his idiocy.

“Where are you going?” Crowley demands as Dean sets off down the street.

“Home. Tell the moose, will you? You’ll know him-- he’s the one next to the witch you’re actually looking for.”

“We did actually want to talk to you,” Cas calls. “It was an incomplete reading-- He can’t clear the cards.”

Dean bites his lip, still facing away, before turning around. “Sounds like a personal problem. What do you need from me?” Why can’t he just tell these two to fuck off?

Crowley grumbles, but opens the door inside, where there’s enough light to see by. “Do you remember what cards you drew?”

“You mean the same cards that I’ve been drawing since I was fifteen? Yeah, I remember.”

“That long?” Cas asks sharply. “That’s… uncommon.”

“That’s statistically impossible,” Dean corrects, leading the way down the stairs and glancing around for an empty table. On stage, Ava recites her epic-- maybe the same as last week? Maybe not, Dean stopped paying attention months ago-- full of multi-syllable words that don’t really make sense, but fit the scene she’s setting.

Sam starts to stand up when Dean enters, settling back down when he shakes his head. The last empty table is a two seater along the wall between two tables of giggling freshmen with a crappy view of the stage. Dean mumbles the appropriate words to a nearby table, stealing a third chair and setting his guitar against the wall.

“So how do we do this?” Dean asks, running his hand through his hair. “Repeat the whole reading or--”

Crowley pulls a deck from his pocket, pulling off the dirty rubber band that holds them together and handing them to Dean. “Shuffle.” The backs of these aren’t the same as the deck Crowley had been using last week, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Although the new deck is significantly darker, so maybe that’ll help.

Riffling cards will be too loud, so Dean cuts the deck repeatedly, dividing and recombining several times. Finally, he pushes it towards Crowley.

Silently, Crowley nods, splitting and cutting the deck one last time before drawing three cards. Flipping them over, the names are familiar, but the imagery is completely different. Five people stand in the bowl of a stadium, three without faces, although it’s unclear if they’re facing him or not; in a jungle, someone geared up for battle-- body armor and a helmet, even goggles-- holds a lantern up to illuminate a giant pyramid; a much abused cassette tape, label scratched out with marker and stained, with swords printed on the plastic.

“Same cards as usual then,” Dean snaps. “The meanings don’t change just because the images do.”

“Except they do.” Cas looks at the cards and then at Crowley. “That’s why he’s using a very different deck.”

“Clea has her strengths, I have mine.” Peering at the cards, Crowley waves his hand dismissively. “Squirrel, be a love, grab us some tea or something please? A decent scotch if they have it, but I doubt it.”

“Get your own--” Dean starts, but subsides when Cas lays a hand on his arm.

“I’ll go with you.” Looking down at Crowley, Cas sighs. “Please remember that we’re guests in this place?”

“The guesting laws only apply to homes, Feathers.”

“Look around,” Cas shoots back fiercely, probably the strongest reaction Dean’s seen from him. “This is one.”

Rolling his eyes while they quietly bicker, Dean heads towards the bar.

“Everything alright?” Andrea asks, already reaching for a pint glass when he reaches the front of the line. “You don’t look too happy with whoever you came back in with.”

“It’s a… thing,” Dean temporizes. “Not really a work thing, but something along those lines.”

“If you say so. Benny’ll be sorry if you sell the shop, ya know.”

“I’m not gonna--” Swallowing, he jerks his shirt sleeve down and avoids her eyes. “I’m not gonna sell the shop. Can I get a couple black teas too? Seems like my guests got lost on the way to ordering for themselves.”

She nods, filling a tea pot with water and settling a strainer for tea inside before handing Dean two mugs. “You sure you can handle this?”

Dean nods, hooking the mugs over a couple fingers and supporting the teapot with one hand and his beer with the other. “I did my time waiting tables.”

“And quit as soon as you browbeat Bobby into giving you three-quarters time. I know you, Dean Winchester, and that includes the stories you’ve told Benny. How long did you last? Two weeks?”

“Three,” Dean admits. “I was begging Bobby after the third day though.”

“That’s what I thought.” She smiles as Benny jumps up on stage to introduce the next performer.

Dean takes it as the dismissal it is, carefully balancing his way back to the table with Crowley and Cas, still bickering.

Cas jumps up to take the pot from him, gingerly setting it on the table, well clear of the cards Crowley still has spread across the table.

“What’s the word, doc?” Dean smirks.

“A shortened version of Doctor,” Cas says flatly. Dean barely catches the slight lift to the corner of his mouth, a barely there and gone smirk.

“Please don’t encourage him.” Crowley holds up his hand. “If you’ll sit, we can get this over with and then go our separate ways.”

“Right.” Slumping into his chair, Dean watches as a young woman climbs up onto the stage, dragging her guitar into her lap. Glitter shines on her dark cheeks and curls, and she smiles at Dean as she starts playing.

It’s pretty, not quite Spanish guitar, but intricate and instrumental in a way he can never replicate.

“If Squirrel will pay attention to the psychic in front of him instead of the young co-ed he has no chance with…”

Dean sighs, turning away from the stage and back to Crowley. “Has anyone told you recently that you’re an asshole?”

“One of my better qualities.” Crowley takes a deep breath. “Anyway. Tell me what you see and we’ll get this over with.”

One by one, Dean points at the same cards he always draws. “Five of cups: I’ve destroyed everything, spilled the inheritance my family left for me and now everyone’s watching me fail.

“Hermit: I’m lost in the jungle, facing something I’ll never understand and will die facing.

“Ten of swords: I’m worn out and broken, no use to anyone. I don’t even have a name anymore, just wreckage along the side of the road.” Leaning back, he takes a long drink of his beer. It tastes like ashes.

Hope is worse than anything else. Maybe one of these days, he’ll learn that before wasting several hundred bucks on it.

Crowley nods like he has any idea what’s going on in Dean’s head. “The eyes of the past are on you, yes, but it’s not a total loss. Only some of your inheritance has been spilled, you have enough to move forward. You faced insurmountable odds and got lost doing so. But you still have a light and a compass, you can still find your way. Let go of the past-- it’s an antique not serving any purpose.”

Dean snorts. “Speak for yourself. My baby will only take cassettes and she’s still gorgeous.”

“Then maybe it’s time to retire her too.”

Dean stares at Crowley, too caught off guard to say anything.

“And my work here is done,” Crowley says cheerfully, gathering up the cards.

“So the cards have been telling me, for my entire life, that I need to let go of the past and suck it up. That’s… useful… to tell a fifteen year old.” Dean grits his teeth. “Of course, the question has changed over the years from ‘what did I do wrong’ to ‘will I meet them again’ to ‘are they happy,’ but sure. Let go of the past, when--” Dean cuts himself off, suddenly vividly aware that they’re in public, that he’s barely managing to keep his volume down. “Keep the money. Enjoy it.”

He’s barely able to stop himself from rubbing at the remains of his mark. Even under three layers and scarring, it feels like it’s burning with all the attention paid. But rubbing it would be a sign of weakness.

How many times in a week does he need to learn that hope is for other people.

He manages to keep his dignity until he’s out the door and most of the way down the block, facing the dark bike path that will, eventually, drop him less than a block away from his apartment. Safer than walking along the streets, especially in the cold, he just can’t…

Ask if his mark-mate is happy, and get the same result as always-- let go of the past. Stop pretending what he cares about matters at all.

Jo’s Jeep is parked outside his building when he finally gets home, neon yellow glowing under the lights. He can see her through the car window, typing something on her phone. Probably to her girlfriend, they do that a lot while learning how to live their lives together.

It’s hard to watch them without exposing his burning jealousy, but he does it anyway. It’s what he does.

Sticking to the shadows, he mounts the stairs to his apartment, closing and locking the door behind him. He’s home, he’s safe, he can collapse now.

Swallowing roughly, he shoves the cash into the cookie jar-- he’ll count it later, much later, when he can bear to think about this week-- and snatches a beer from the fridge.

He would rather have a whiskey or ten, but he finished the last bottle a few months ago and never replaced it, because ironically, he’d been cutting down on the drinking as his mark faded into nothing.

Now it’s… well, meaningless, if it’s still even around.

Jo pounds on his door before he’s even halfway through the beer. “Dean, let me in or I swear to God--”

Jerking the door open from under her fist, Dean snarls. “Shut the fuck up, people are sleeping.”

“Then don’t try to hide from me.” She pushes past him, flipping on the light as she does. “Disappearing act was real cute, by the way. Call Sam, he’s frantic.”

“I don’t know why, I did what he wanted.”

“He _wanted_ to spend some time with his brother at the only time said brother wasn’t in a depressive funk. So did I. So did Ro.”

“Bullshit,” Dean growls, throwing the lock and stalking back to his tiny kitchen. “I have no idea what you wanted, but I hope the show was worth it.”

“What show? Your set? You did awesome! I’m super proud of you!”

“Right,” Dean scoffs. “Like anyone in that crowd actually gave a damn about--”

“What the fuck is wrong?” Jo demands. “You’ve been like this for months. You’re cutting yourself off from your family, why? Because I found my fucking soulmate and you haven’t? Since when did you give a shit?”

He stares at her for a moment before shaking his head. Grabbing his beer from the counter, he drops onto the couch, realizing for the first time that he left his guitar at Benny’s. “Shit, my guitar--”

“Sam’s got it. Some smarmy British dude brought it to our table after you disappeared.”

“Oh, okay.” Dean breathes out again, panic ebbing away.

“You’re not butthurt about me finding Charlie, are you?” Jo asked, her voice suddenly small as she curls into the other end of the couch. “Because, there was never any way--”

“No. This isn’t your fault, Blondie. I just--” Dean sighs and sets his beer on the window sill behind the couch. Stripping down to his t-shirt takes a few seconds, where her eyes just keep widening. Shivering briefly, he tilts his arm towards the light.

“I’ve seen your scar,” Jo says. “Still think you should get it touched up with some nifty tattoos.”

Dean pauses to think about it before shaking his head. He presses his fingertips into the darker areas near the top, barely darker than the autumn-faded freckles that surround it. All that’s left of his mark are those spots, barely larger than fingerprints, two of them, with a twist of scar tissue between. There’s another spot a few inches down, but it could just as easily be another scar. “Do you know how long it takes for a mark to fade after you’ve been rejected?”

“I’m guessing you’re gonna tell me,” Jo whispers, reaching for Dean’s hand.

“Twenty-five years, more or less.” Dean slumps back, shrugging back into his flannel. “Your fucking mark-mate meets you once, in high school, while you’re having a bad day, and they reject you because you’re fucking kids, and then--” He breaks off, because he still doesn’t know what he did wrong, or who, just that it has to be his fault because who else’s would it be. “A month, maybe two. And then I get to pretend that I never had a soul to mark someone with.”

“You still have a soul, Dean. As much as anyone does, I mean.” She tilts her head to look at him. “So what are you going to do?”

“What can I do? I’m gonna sleep and then carry on.” If his heart stutters at the thought, well, what Jo doesn’t know won’t hurt her. It’ll be better in the morning, and maybe one day, it’ll be true.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean doesn’t normally work on Saturdays. He’s leaving a lot of money on the table by not, but with only the three of them, it would have all of them working six days a week and it’s just not worth it.

So if he’s in the shop on a Saturday, he’s either catching up from the week before or working on the Impala.

Sometimes Garth or Jo are there too, doing the same thing, although most of the time they’re not. With lives and girlfriends, he can’t really blame them for preferring to spend their Saturdays with their families than the grouchy old man who signs their paychecks.

Garth is finishing up an oil change on his daughter’s car when Dean rolls in.

“I would have given you a ride,” Garth points out cheerfully. “I thought you were here, actually, since the Impala is.”

Shaking his head, Dean shrugs into his coveralls. “Sam picked me up after work last night. Didn’t feel like getting over here to pick her up when I could just walk it in the morning.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Dean watches him for a long moment before pushing open the second garage door and pulling the Impala in. She doesn’t need much work, but he takes advantage of the space and time to give her a though clean and refresh her fluids. It’s relaxing in a way that very little else is.

Garth takes off after another twenty minutes or so, leaving behind a clean station and a radio tuned to his mid-nineties rap crap. Pushing his creeper out from under the Impala, Dean changes the station first to one of the classic rock stations before frowning. Bad Company just doesn’t fit his mood.

It takes a few tries to successfully get his phone to play through the speakers, pulling up a late nineties and early aughts alternative playlist that he will never admit to creating, but that fits his mood.

He’s bent over the engine, trying to fiddle a latch closed, when a car pulls up to the other bay. “We’re closed,” Dean calls, not looking up. “Sorry. Bring it back Monday.”

The car parks and shuts off. “I was hoping I could talk to you,” Cas says over the squeal of a car door. “If you’ll allow me.”

Pulling himself out of the Impala’s engine, Dean grunts, jerking his thumb towards the waiting area. “You can’t be on the floor, even if we’re closed.”

He doesn’t know why he’s allowing Cas to intrude on his day off, doesn’t know why he can’t just let it go, why he keeps allowing both of them to hurt him.

“I need to apologize,” Cas starts when they’re ensconced in Dean’s office, hands wrapped around mugs of coffee. “Crowley’s talents are often-- abrupt and unnecessarily aggressive.”

“You don’t need to apologize for your boss, man. He’s a dick, but I don’t blame you.”

“Perhaps you should, as my husband is only in the position he is in due to my interference.”

“You’re married to the asshole?” Dean asks, not bothering to hide his astonishment. Even after watching them last night, he hadn’t gotten that. Although Cas had said something along those lines, hadn’t he.

“Not every mate-mark relationship is as peaceful as the one between your Jo and her girlfriend.”

“Well, yeah, Sammy and Ro’s relationship is nothing like that, but you can at least tell that they like each other.”

Cas shrugs, his fingers tightening against the mug before they relax. “Rowena’s family has very… particular… ideas of what constitutes a solid relationship. When she abandoned them, she appears to have abandoned most of their thought processes as well.”

“How would you know?”

“That is a question better asked of Crowley or Rowena herself.”

“She doesn’t mention her family much, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot.” Dean swallows, glancing across the desk. “None of that tells me why you’re here though.”

“You’re hurt, your distress was screaming across the city last night.”

“And? You say that like it’s something new. And you sure as fuck didn’t care last week.”

“We, I, didn’t know last week.” Cas looks away. “I knew it was a risk, when setting up your appointment on Monday. It was already going to be a long day, with several difficult readings.”

“But not enough to not do it,” Dean says bitterly.

“Consults,” Cas actually makes the air quotes, which should not be fucking adorable, “are generally code for ‘this client isn’t listening.’ Sometimes with less flattering words used than client.”

“So hike the prices and lose the tact,” Dean finishes. Hunching his shoulders, he drags his coffee towards him, watching curls of steam float off it. “She could have told me,” he whispers. “It's not like I was asking questions or--” he cuts himself off, wary of exposing himself too far.

“Yes, well, the problems with informal codes is that sometimes consult really _does_ mean consult and we only discovered that when Crowley’s plants start dying.”

Dean doesn’t bother to hide the snort of laughter that escapes.

“Exactly.” Cas grins, big and gummy, and Dean can see just a tiny bit of his actual personality beneath the serious assistant or earnest register jockey. “In any case, you have my apologies for putting you in a position where I knew Crowley would be tired and irritated.”

“Where is he, anyway?” Dean asks, glancing at the clock. It’s pushing noon, surely they have better things to do on a Saturday than hang out with him. Or wait on him.

“He was… unsure of how you would react to us appearing at your place of business.” Cas bites his lip. “We need to return home this afternoon, however; if you would be amenable, perhaps, lunch?”

Dean nods, trying to restrain the parts of him that want to kick sand all over everything. He’s going to be alone and soulless soon enough, there’s no need to hasten the process by not making friends when he can. “I’ll need to clean up, but yeah. We can do that.”

Cas nods and pushes away from the desk. “Let’s go.”

Maybe Cas was just as worried about this as Dean. Nodding, Dean leads Cas back to the garage so he can close up the Impala and the bay doors without getting grease over everything. Stripping off his coveralls, he grabs his keys and glances at Cas’s car. “Do you… want drive together?” Fuck, he sounds like a teenager, asking his crush to the dance.

“If you wish.” Cas sounds surprised. “I thought you would want your own transportation rather than being beholden to us.”

Dean forces himself to shrug like it isn’t a big deal. “No sense in taking two-- you don’t know your way around town that well, and…” he stumbles to a stop before he can embarrass himself further. Forcing himself to relax, he nods before pulling at the passenger side door. “I’m okay with it if you are.”

Cas nods and climbs into the car.

The car is a late seventies Lincoln and needs some serious TLC. The squeal of the doors is even worse up close, the fan rattles when it turns on… “You need to get this thing into a shop before it explodes while you’re in it.”

“It’s always made that rattle,” Cas says, reaching over and thumping the dash with his fist. The rattle quiets down to the occasional tick, although new and more worrying sounds emerge. “She’s been mine since I learned to drive. Not the prettiest, or the most subtle, but she gets me where I need to go and when I need to get there with a minimum of breakdowns.”

Dean really can’t fault him for that, it’s not like he’s not driving a fifty year old car because nostalgia or anything. “I learned to drive in the Impala. She was my dad’s before she was mine.” For a really long time, she was home. In a lot of ways, she still is.

He catches Cas looking at him, but doesn’t say anything else-- he’s already too exposed. He should have driven himself, not risked…

Why is this so hard?

“She’s very beautiful. You take good care of her.” Cas swings the car into the parking lot of a cheap motel. “Unlike this beast, who is only running out of spite and prayer.”

“I know you said that you needed to get back, but this thing is…” Dean sighs. “Let me at least make sure you’re not going to blow up and die on the drive back after lunch.”

Crowley knocks on the window before Cas responds, popping open the car door. “Hello Feathers, Squirrel. Lunch then?”

Dean nods, sliding out of the car so Crowley can have the front seat. “Did y’all have something in mind or…?”

“Your town, your choice,” Crowley says smoothly, pulling the door closed.

They end up at one of the diners on the edge of town, far away from the students. It’s awkward, the three of them are too tall to sit comfortably in a booth, but all the tables were taken.

Dean waits until they’ve ordered and have their drinks in front of them before looking across the table to meet their eyes. “So why are you really here? You didn’t come all this way just to finish a reading, or to settle some curse.”

Crowley’s eyebrow jumps as he reaches for his coffee. “You think we’re lying?”

“I think no one worries this much about the wellbeing of a customer. Especially if you only think they’re in your shop because everyone else is fed up with their bullshit.” Dean leans back, drinking his pop. “It’s your business, and I won’t tell you how to run it, but don’t lie to me just to fulfill some juju bingo or something.”

Crowley sighs, looking at Cas. “As I expected. No one expects good deeds anymore, angel.”

“Then do more of them,” Cas snaps back. “You of all people know--”

“Not this again. I can’t change human nature, Feathers. I wish I could.”

Dean watches them like a ping pong tournament, head swiveling as they bicker, some long standing argument that is so well worn that they’re using shorthand for each other’s positions and…

He can see it now, how well matched they are, even if he can’t see their marks to confirm it. Puzzle pieces that fit together and complete their own pattern. He pushes aside the bitterness that tries to form-- he knew he never had a chance with either of them.

He silently wraps his hand around his hidden mark, tracing a finger along the scar tissue that he can still feel through multiple layers, before releasing it. He needs to let it go.

“As the angel said,” Crowley drags their conversation over to include Dean. “We are, primarily, here to complete your reading. If my own prurient curiosity wishes to know exactly how you affected your reading like that, well,” he shrugs, half-helplessly. “Knowledge is power.”

It’s an act, Dean can tell, although he’s not sure what Crowley is trying to cover, nor why. It’s not like Dean’s going to report him to the non-existent authorities for being a jerk. “I don’t know how much use I’ll be in answering your questions, but sure. Ask away.”

Their food gets brought out before Crowley can ask anything, which is good, because Dean’s not sure what the answers are going to be.

Cas moans around his first bite of cheeseburger, his eyes sliding closed.

“Now you’ve done it.” Crowley smirks. “You’ll never get rid of him now.” He takes a bite of his own burger and raises an eyebrow. “Surprisingly good, actually, for someplace that hasn’t been remodelled in several decades.”

Dean smirks, swiping his fries through a pile of ketchup. “I don’t lie about burgers or pie.”

“Implying that there _are_ some things you lie about.”

“Everyone lies about something. Isn’t it your job to figure out what?”

Crowley inclines his head in acknowledgment before nodding. “True enough.”

They finish their meals in near silence, almost awkward at times when Cas or Crowley look like they want to ask a question but stop before they get the words out. It never crosses the line though and it ends up being the opposite of awkward.

Comfortable. More comfortable than is reasonable given that he’s at lunch with two near strangers.

Somehow, they end up back at the garage, conversation picking back up now that their bellies are full, with Crowley and Cas watching as he adjusts a few minor things on the pimpmobile.

Tightening one last bolt, Dean tosses the wrench into his tool chest and reaches for a rag. “She needs a lot more work, but I’m reasonably confident she won’t fall to pieces under you on the interstate.”

“You didn’t need--”

“Yeah, I did,” Dean cuts Cas off. “You drove all the way out here for… whatever… reasons. I’m not letting you take out half the highway on your way home.” He grins at Cas, trying to take the sting out. The car’s old, after all, and while Cas clearly loves her, he’s not been doing anything beyond the most basic maintenance. Although, speaking of. “Did you know you have adjustable suspension on this thing? Or would, if the hydraulics weren’t screwed up?”

Crowley winces, which implies a pretty interesting story, but Cas nods. “They were quite entertaining.”

“And then someone, nameless, decided to bounce up and down on them?” Dean snorts. “Sammy tried to convince me to install them on the Impala once-- there was a car driving past the motel and it was ‘so epic.’” Dean trails off, looking at the Lincoln again. “It was days before he shut up about them.” It probably wasn’t this car, for all that it matches his memory. No reason to create coincidences where they don’t exist.

“They were fun, Feathers,” Crowley admits. “Bouncing up and down like a rubber ball.”

“So I gathered when you wouldn’t stop messing with them,” Cas says dryly. “For the two week period after I had the car and before they ‘mysteriously’ quit working.”

“I could, probably, get them working again,” Dean offers, trying to cut off the bickering before it starts again. “If you wanted.”

“We can’t impose on you like that.” Cas crosses his arms. “We’ve already imposed on you more than we should.”

Dean shrugs. “I can’t do it today anyway, especially if they’ve been broken that long. Probably better to rip them out and start from scratch.” Reaching up, he scratches his neck. “It was a thought. Probably a stupid one.”

Crowley is looking at him like he said something completely off the wall, but as Dean reviews what he said, he doesn’t think anything of it. Nothing particularly special, just an offer to fix something that’s broken. It’s about the only thing he’s good at.

“If you don’t want to drive all the way out here, I can recommend some shops around Salina for the basics. It’s not--”

“Clearly, they’re not very good if they’re letting us ride around in a death trap,” Crowley says. “Perhaps they’re not as good as you think they are.”

Dean bites his lip, hiding the jolt of hurt. “Sure. In any case, it’s after lunch and y’all wanted to get home early, so you should get on the road. Drive safe.” His voice is far more curt than he really means for it to be, showing off his emotions better than anything else.

Crowley barely knows him, and he’s just trying to get out of here. No reason to take subtle insults to heart. Forcing himself to shrug, he steps back, out of their personal space, allowing them to retreat to their car before he can be even more of an asshole.

He shoves his hands into his pockets as they climb in, waving finally as they pull out of the lot, before turning back to the garage and opening the Impala back up. There’s got to be something else that needs attention.

Something besides him ruining things with the first new friends he’s made since he was in his twenties.


	8. Chapter 8

Sam and Rowena invite themselves over for dinner, showing up just as he’s about to throw a frozen pizza in the oven. “We wanted to hear about how today went,” Sam explains as he sets a bottle of wine on the counter. “And it’s harder for you to evade our questions if we’re here.”

“Some notice would have been nice,” Dean mutters. He hands Sam the corkscrew before looking into the depths of his freezer and pantry to figure out what he can possibly make.

Spaghetti it is.

“It was a day. Worked on the Impala, did some paperwork. I don’t see anything exciting about it.”

“So Crowley and Cas didn’t stop by?” Sam’s brow furrows as he shoots a glance at Ro. “They said they were going to last night.”

“Are you keeping track of me?”

“Of course not, darling.” Ro picks up her wine glass delicately with one hand. “We’re concerned about you. Especially after last night’s affair.”

Dean bites back the angry words that he wants to yell and and jerkily pours the noodles into the boiling water. “Where you set me up.” He snorts. “I’m not an idiot. I’m well aware there’s no reason those two would seek me out, let alone find me, if _someone_ hadn’t interfered.”

“Interference is such a vague term.” Rowena waves it away. “I simply ensured Crowley was aware of the consequences of refusing to help you.”

“He didn’t refuse,” Dean spits out. “Just like every other psychic, palm reader, hoodoo woman, or vaguely talented witch I’ve ever sought out. Crowley did a reading, it was useless, and I left.”

“Crowley doesn’t perform useless readings.”

Dean snorts. “This one was.” Glancing at the sauce warming on the stove, he leans against the counter facing her. “Ro, Sam… Let it go. I’ve wasted too much time and effort and money on this already.”

“You can’t just refuse to find your soulmate, Dean.”

“Watch me,” Dean snarls. “They don’t want me, fine. They’re happy, presumably, with someone else and that’s as much say as I get. I don’t understand why this is so fucking important to you. It’s not been a thing since we were teenagers, why now?”

Sam pulls out the puppy dog eyes, wide-eyed innocence so he gets whatever he wants. “I told you-- I want you to be happy.”

Happy. Everyone wants him to be _happy_ , like if they poke and prod him enough, it’ll just happen. Like suddenly it matters, at all, when for most of his life, no one’s given a damn.

“Wanting me to be happy doesn’t mean pulling this shit, Sam.” Dean sags against the counter, exhaustion suddenly slamming down on him.

“Dean, I’m insulted that you think I don’t care about your wellbeing.”

Raking his hands through his hair, Dean holds back the scream. Seems like that’s all he’s done today-- modulate his voice, responses, desires for someone else’s comfort.

“Let me make this clear.” Ignoring Sam’s discomfort and Rowena’s leers, he strips his long sleeve shirt off and tosses it towards his bedroom. “It’s faded. Gone or near enough. Whatever _mystical_ happiness you think is going to happen just because I meet some stranger? Won’t.” Snatching the pasta off the burner, he dumps it into a colander. “Dinner’s ready. Dump the dishes in the sink when you leave.”

He pushes past Sam, marching into his room. He’s not, actually, sixteen anymore and slamming his door won’t help, no matter how much he wants it to. He shuts it firmly instead, keeping Sam and Rowena’s schemes at bay.

Glancing down at his arm, he wishes, not for the first time, that the injury had been worse, that it’d obliterated his entire mark, that he never stood a chance, instead of a deceptive one.

Collapsing onto his bed, he tries to push the whole thing out of his mind-- hard, when he can hear Sam and Rowena arguing in the living room-- and focuses instead on writing down everything he saw wrong with Cas’s Lincoln. They won’t come back, but he can mail it to them. That way they won’t have to interact with him since he made them… uncomfortable.

He thinks that's what that was anyway, with the sudden shift in their tones.

Sam knocks on the door a few minutes later. “Dean, can we talk? Please?”

“Awesome,” Dean whispers dourly, opening the door. Leaning against the door frame, he crosses his arms.

“Since Jo met Charlie, you’ve been quiet,” Sam starts. “You just kinda checked out in June and now with this? We have every right to be worried about you. You’ve been going through the motions for nearly six months.”

“So you’re, what, going to send me to psychics to ease your guilt over finding Ro?”

“I found him,” Rowena calls from the other room, not even pretending to not eavesdrop. “Just so we’re clear.”

“Awesome.” Dean rolls his eyes. “Nothing you can do is going to fix this, Sammy. There’s nothing to fucking _fix_.”

“Then go talk to Crowley again next week. See if maybe he can’t force a new reading.”

“I’ll do _what_?”

“You heard me. Besides, you’re gonna have to figure out how to get along with them eventually.”

Dean sighs, letting his arms down. “Why? “They want nothing to do with me! I offered to look at Cas’s car and they just… shut down.” If they’re going to force him to talk about this, he wants a beer. Knocking his shoulder into Sam’s, he stalks back to the kitchen and pulls out another beer.

Rowena shoves a bowl of spaghetti into his hands as soon as the cap is off his beer. “Come sit down. Tell me what Crowley had to say.”

“About what?”

Rowena points to the couch and the low end table that normally holds Dean’s mail by the front door. Setting her wine glass on one of the corners, she looks at him expectantly. “Last night, this morning, last week. Any of them.”

Dean twirls some noodles onto his fork, staring into his bowl. “Same reading as ever. Death and destruction, it’s probably my fault, and I’m alone.”

Ro hmms, glancing over at Sam where he’s leaning against the kitchen divider. “There’s more to it than that. Sam, darling, will you fetch my bag from the car?”

Sam tilts his head, but agrees, setting his own glass of wine on the counter. “Dean, you need more furniture.”

“Why? There’s no room.”

“Because sometimes your family likes to come visit?” Sam points out, slowly, like Dean’s a child.

Since his family also likes to show up unannounced and with no warning, that point probably doesn’t have as much weight as Sam might wish.

Rolling his eyes, Dean settles back into the couch, focusing on his spaghetti instead of Sam and Rowena’s attempts to talk without words. “Just go grab her bag or whatever, Sam. You’re not going to win this, and I’m not going to discuss anything that you need to know about.”

“At some point, you need to stop hiding things from him,” Ro says delicately after Sam leaves.

“At some point, he needs to stop being butthurt about not knowing everything I took care of while we were kids.”

Rowena hmms, again, tapping her finger against her glass. “Crowley couldn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know?”

“He tried to spin it, but…” Dean shrugs. “If the answer is the same regardless of the question, I’m guessing spin doesn’t matter. Whatever is weird about me and psychic whatever is permanent and depressing.”

“Perhaps.”

Sam comes in with a burst of cold air, dropping Rowena’s bag in Dean’s lap before disappearing into the bedroom and coming back with a large floor pillow. “I don’t know why you keep this in your room, jerk.”

“Because that’s where the closet is? Quit complaining-- you invited yourself over.” Passing Ro her bag, Dean grumpily sets his bowl on the floor and looks at her. “What’s your plan?”

She pulls a vial of something from her bag and hands it to him. “Just sit back and think of Scotland, my dear.”

“The fuck does that mean?” The liquid swirls thickly in the glass, like cheap rum fresh out of the freezer, even though the vial is room temperature. “What is this?”

“If it works properly, something to help you find your mark-mate.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“A cheap mixture of vodka and some herbs, none of which will harm you.” She pauses, tilting her head. “As long as you’ve only been drinking recently. There might be interactions with other intoxicants.”

Dean shrugs. It’s been booze or nothing for six months or more.

Twisting the cap off, he grimaces at the smell before downing it. “Now what?”

Ro mutters something-- Latin maybe? Or maybe completely made up?-- and takes the empty vial from his hand. “Sleep now, and we’ll see in the morning how this works.”

“K.” Dean nods, his limbs already leaden. Too tired to move, really.

Sam snorts, disappearing for a moment and coming back with a blanket. “Easier to just let you sleep on the couch, dude. Hopefully your neck won’t kill you in the morning.”

“G’night, Wesley,” Dean mutters to the back of his eyelids, already mostly asleep.

_A blonde woman watches him across a table, pushing a piece of pie towards him, unworried about the blood that drips from her left hand into a high-ball glass at her elbow. Her face is vague, blurred, but he knows her, somehow. Ignoring her own wounds to take care of him, because she doesn’t know what else to do._

_A baby cries behind him in the living room, distracting her. She smiles at him one last time before pushing away from the table. “We’ll go to the park once Sammy’s eaten lunch, okay?”_

_Dean nods eagerly, reaching for the glass of blood while Mama tends to Sammy. He slops some onto his pie accidentally, but eats it anyway, grinning red up at her when she comes back in. The iron spreads across his tongue, coating everything until all he can taste is sugar and metal._

_Dean hunches further into Dad’s jacket, trusting the leather to protect him from the drizzling rain. The parking lot is full, nebulous blobs of cars blocking his way into the shop. It looks cozy in there, warm and bright, with nine women working together._

_It takes effort to wind his way through the car-blobs, so much that he’s exhausted by the time he reaches the doorway. And filthy-- oil, tacky with dirt and contaminants, coats his hands and face, turning into gooey balls in the wrinkles of his skin._

_Reaching for the door, he drops his hand when he sees the filth, shoving it deep into the jacket pocket. He doesn’t dare enter the shop, not like this. He can’t drag this into their lives and risk spreading his dirty fingerprints._

_One of the women-- he can't tell which one, they’re all tall and thin, sword sharp, with faces that shift, sometimes looking like Ro, sometimes Jo, sometimes Ellen-- meets his eyes before he can turn away. She drags him through the door, standing him in the center of the room, and then they’re all surrounding him, stripping him of his jacket, clothes, everything, until he’s standing naked before them._

_A hand-- his hand?-- reaches through the undergrowth into the sky, plucking a golden coin from where the sun once was--is?-- and drawing it back to him. He holds it close to his heart, pressed white hot against his skin while he sprints through the jungle looking for a clearing, his clearing._

_Dean digs deep, shovelful after shovelful tossed aside from a slowly deepening hole. Clouds roll in and cover the sun while he digs until it’s pitch black. Still the coin glows, the color shifting every few seconds, but still hot, still burning him.._

_The hole is grave deep when he’s finished, after hours of digging that only took minutes. Pulling the coin away from his heart, it illuminates the entire clearing like a rising sun. Dropping it in the pit, he pushes dirt over the top, wincing as darkness falls yet again. Somehow it feels less dead, if just as scary._

_Something small and glowing pokes through the loose dirt at his feet. Reaching for it..._

Dean rolls off the couch, landing with a pained grunt when his knee knocks into the end table. Making a face, he ignores the dishes still on the floor and sink and, wrapping the blanket around him, shuffles back to his bedroom and bed.


	9. Chapter 9

He feels hungover in the morning, his head pounding in time with his heart. Pulling his blanket over his head, Dean closes his eyes against the morning sun streaming in through the window above his bed.

The room is silent for a moment before his phone chirps on his desk.

It takes a couple more minutes before he can drag himself out of bed, stumbling to his desk to grab his phone and stare at it, bleary eyed.

_> >Thanksgiving dinner at our house, 3pm. We’ll shop, you cook. Send me a grocery list._

Because that’s how he wants to spend his day, cooking for… he stutters to a stop, dropping the phone like a hot potato, because there’s no way it’s almost Thanksgiving. But the calendar doesn’t lie, and yeah. Thanksgiving is in four days.

Shit.

Dry swallowing some aspirin, Dean hurriedly showers and gets dressed, nearly running from his apartment while he scrambles to get all the errands he didn’t do yesterday done.

Five hours later, his errands are done and he’s staring at a guest list on his phone that he doesn’t know what to do with. Most of them are expected-- Sam and Ro, Jo and Charlie-- but then there’s the last pair of names on the list: Crowley and Cas.

Not enough that they want nothing to do with him, he’s going to sitting across from them at the dinner table, watching them bicker fondly while he…

What the fuck is _wrong_ with him? They’re married, and marked together besides. Yeah, they’re nice, and cute, but that’s not for him. This is why he doesn’t have friends. He’s nearly forty, far too old to be having a crush on someone just because they’re nice to him.

He shoots Sam back a series of question marks and drags out the list of recipes they use every year.

Rowena doesn’t bring up the potion when she brings Sam’s car by the shop on Monday. Or when she picks it up that evening. Normally, Dean wouldn’t think anything of it, but the dreams don’t stop. It’s the same thing every night-- Mom bleeding at the kitchen table; nine women/swords in a warm shop; a glowing coin planted as a seed. Over and over again, until Dean can flip between the images easily. He tries to search for the meanings, but nothing makes sense.

He’s searching for something in the dreams, he’s figured that much out, something hidden in the warmth of the sun that’s setting earlier and earlier each day. Exactly what though, he has no idea.

“Dude, are you ok?” Jo demands Wednesday afternoon. “That’s the third bolt you’ve nearly stripped _today_. What the fuck is wrong with you? I know you’re not stressing this much over tomorrow.”

Glaring half-heartedly, Dean yawns. “Slept like crap last night, is all.” Closer to not at all, between the dreams and worry about impressing Crowley and Cas. Or if not impressing them, at least not embarrassing himself.

“Crowley or Cas?” She always has been to perceptive for his own good. “Which one’s got you in a tizzy?”

“It doesn’t matter, they’re together and I’ve got no freaking right.”

“Both then.” Jo smirks. “Some couples are into that, you know.”

“Some are,” Dean agrees flatly. “But the chances aren’t high.” Pushing himself to his feet, he kicks the creeper against the wall where it’s out of the way.

“Is this about your thing?” Jo asks, nodding towards his arm.

“You mean do I think that two guys-- that I only met because one of them is a psychic-- want to have a threesome with someone who’s faded and will never know his mark-mate?” Dean scoffs. “Pretty obvious answer, I think.”

“Gotta ask ‘em out anyway.”

Dean closes his eyes, trying to keep his temper. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to risk it, not with everything else going on.”

“I’m going to get it out of you one way or another, Winchester.”

“Yeah, good luck with that, Blondie.” Abruptly changing the subject, Dean jerks his thumb to the car he just finished. “Can you pull the codes on this one, make sure we’ve caught everything?”

She nods stiffly, crossing her arms before spinning on her heel.

Dean watches her go before heading to the desk and pulling the next set of paperwork. Just an oil change, which normally he’d leave for Garth, but something about the mindlessness of it sounds appealing and reassuring. This, he can do without having to fight every step of the way.

Jo finishes up with the SUV, snagging the keys and pulling it into the back lot to wait for pick up.

Eventually, it’s six and time to head home. Dean shoos Jo out ahead of him before locking the doors and making sure the alarm is set.

Jo waits until he’s done before throwing her arms around him. “I’m sorry. I’ll quit pushing.”

Dean wraps his arms around her, burying his nose in her hair for a moment before kissing her forehead. “It’s fine, Princess. I know you just want what’s best for me.”

“Damn straight, flyboy.”

Dean snorts, letting her go and pushing her towards her car. “Go, I’ll see you tomorrow. I got prep to do tonight.”

“Ooo, what are we having?”

“Whatever I feel like making since somehow all the cooking got dumped in my lap on Sunday.”

“Chicken, potatoes, pie?”

“And green bean casserole. You know Sam will freak if there's nothing green on the table.”

“You could always just make Key Lime pie. It’s green… sometimes.”

Dean shrugs. “One year, I’ll make everything _except_ the vegetables green. We’ll see how he likes that.”

“Alright. Plan is to be there around one, so if you need us to pick up anything, let me know before the stores close.”

“Gotcha.”

Cas’s pimpmobile is sitting in front of Dean’s building when he gets home, two spots down from where Dean normally parks, engine still ticking as it cools.

Frowning, Dean hurries upstairs, skipping checking his mail for trying to figure out why the hell Cas is _here_ , at his apartment. Hell, how Cas even knows where he lives.

The overhead light that Dean never bothers to use is on, flooding the walkway in front of his door with warm light. Dean pauses for a moment, weird deja vu flooding him while he stands outside his door, watching through the window. Cas and Crowley dance together in the cleared space of his living room, swaying to some song Dean can’t hear.

They break apart when Dean opens the door, looking up at him with slightly guilty-- Cas-- and smug-- Crowley-- expressions.

“How did you--”

“My dear cousin said you’d been having weird dreams and that we should let ourselves in rather than wait for you to get home,” Crowley blurts out.

“Cousin. Ro’s your _cousin_?”

“Vastly simplified, but yes.”

“How simplified?” Dean demands, trying to work his brain back up to dealing with the fact that there are two near strangers in his home, dancing, and he doesn’t--

Crowley counts on his fingers, as Cas slowly edges in front of him, protecting him. “Second-- No, third cousin, a couple times removed.” He shrugs carelessly. “Something like that.”

“So answering questions with the least useful information is a family trait. Got it.” Doesn’t explain why they’re here, but Ro never explains anything either. “Did she give you a key or--”

“We let ourselves in,” Cas says in a low rumble. “Your locks--”

Dean waves it off before he can finish. “They’re crap. So you just… broke in. Alright.” Taking a deep breath, he looks at them, both of them trying to protect the other. “I don’t care right now. I’m gonna wash the grease off and get some prep for tomorrow started. Then we can deal with… why you’re here.”

He hurries through his shower, dragging on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt before leaving the safety of the bathroom. The impulse to pull on a long sleeve shirt wars with his hatred of doing laundry until he growls at himself. They know about his arm already, and he has to knead the dough before setting it to rise.

Crowley hangs up the phone as Dean reenters the living room. “Hope you like Chinese. It’ll be here in about thirty minutes.”

Dean stares at him, trying to reboot his brain. “You… didn’t need to do that.”

Cas arches an eyebrow. “We show up out of the blue, the night before a major holiday, and you thought you would need to feed us? We’re not assholes.”

Crowley must catch Dean’s skeptical look because he snorts. “Ok, I am. But not like that.”

Dean nods silently, turning towards the kitchen. “Beer? Water? There might be some wine left--”

“Dean, come sit down,” Crowley orders. Kindly, but it’s still unmistakably an order. “If your dreams are odd enough to cause Rowena to comment…”

“I didn’t tell her about them,” Dean says. “She --”

“She tried one of her godsawful concoctions on you and then left you to sleep it off?” Crowley snorts. “Manipulative bint. So, tell me about them then.”

Slowly, flinchingly, he does, although Dean doesn’t think he’s getting the full emotional experience across. He gets the repeated images down though, even going so far as to sketch them out, poorly, on a notepad Cas pulled from somewhere.

Crowley nods when he’s finished, glancing at Cas where he’s sitting on the floor between them. “What do you think?”

“I think for someone who’s had the same tarot card reading for twenty-five years, he’s dreaming, remarkably clearly, of a completely different reading.”

Crowley nods before holding out his hand. “Let me see your palm.”

Dean stares at his hand before laying his hand on Crowley’s. He doesn’t see any difference between his palm now and how it was a few days ago, but _maybe_.

Cas comes up to look too, tracing lines with a barely there touch. Dean’s starting to get the impression that Cas does significantly more than answer the phone for Crowley and work at the gas station for consistent income. Like Crowley’s psychic abilities are only half the reason his name has been spread as much as it has.

“Are you actually psychic?” Dean asks, tearing his gaze away from the two men clutching his hand. “Or do you just have some skills and decided that’s the best way to use them.”

“Awfully personal, Squirrel.” Crowley presses his thumb into the side of Dean’s hand, catching a nail in one of the valleys under his pinkie .

“You’re holding my hand, Crowley. I think some level of personal is to be expected.”

Cas snorts. “He has a point.”

Crowley shakes his head. “We’ll discuss it later, it’s unimportant for right now.” He runs a ticklish finger across the callouses on Dean’s palm before letting his hand drop. “Nothing has really changed here. Which you probably knew.”

“Can’t say I’d notice if the lines on my palm changed, but if they did, I think it’d probably hurt.” He shrugs carelessly. “Worst my hands have gotten this week was barking against an engine block.”

His hands are cold, left abandoned in his lap. Taking a deep breath, he pushes to his feet, stepping around Cas. “I need to get started on bread for tomorrow, if y’all want to throw something on the TV.”

“Or we can talk,” Cas points out. “You’re far more interesting than anything on TV.”

“If you say so.” Dean pulls out his sugar and yeast, getting that set up to activate while he mixes up the few dry ingredients. “How has it been in psychic land this week?”

“Quiet,” Cas says. “We’ll pick up again next week, but no one cares about their dead pets the week of Thanksgiving.”

“Dottie was asking for her grandmother’s stuffing recipe,” Crowley points out. “Since the poor dear didn’t think to write it down before grandma died.”

Dean arches an eyebrow. “Any luck?”

“Passed along her grandmother’s recipe of course,” Crowley says with a shudder. “All twenty disgusting ingredients of it.”

“So you…”

“Seances are generally terrible.” Cas settles onto the couch, watching Dean through the small window into the kitchen. “She really is being haunted by her grandmother and ghosts tend to… be talkative when I’m around.”

“And why is that?” Pouring the water and yeast into the flour, Dean grabs a spoon to stir. He doesn’t look up, not wanting to pressure Cas into answering truthfully.

“It’s… complicated,” Castiel says hesitantly. “The easy answer is that I’m particularly receptive to the veil.”

“So you’re psychic too.” Dean hmms, turning out the dough and beginning to knead. “Will I understand the non-easy answer?”

“By the time you need to, you’ll be able to.”

“So, no.” Dean shoves vaguely hurt feelings back down and pretends they don’t exist. “You two work together for some readings then.”

“Just seances,” Crowley says. “I’m perfectly capable of most of this work on my own.”

“Not just a psychic then.” Dean nods. “Y’all sure you don’t want a beer or something?”

Before they can answer, the delivery driver knocks on the door, passing Cas a bag of food in exchange for a handful of bills. Cas looks around the small living room for someplace to set the bag before depositing it on Crowley’s lap. “Will you be ready for dinner soon?”

Dean nods, grabbing a section of the dough and stretching it out. “Yeah, I’m almost done here. Plates are to the right of the sink, silverware below.” Pulling his hands free of the dough, he dumps it into a bowl and shoves it into the cold oven.

It takes him a few minutes to get cleaned up and the bread ready to rise. By the time he’s done, Cas and Crowley have opened up the containers and are splitting things up.

“We should have asked,” Cas says, sounding vaguely horrified. “Are you allergic to anything?”

“Nothing that’s going to turn up in food.”

Crowley smirks. “Latex? Poison Ivy?”

“Cats, actually,” Dean shoots back. “And hay fever. Unless you think cat dander is going to show up, chinese is fine.” His knees pop when he drops onto the floor pillow and he tries to hide the wince. They don’t hurt, but it’s yet another reminder that he’s getting old.

“You distracted me before telling me why you’re here.”

Crowley slurps up a noodle before shrugging. “We started to and you distracted yourself.”

“If reading my palm tells you nothing new, nothing else is either,” Dean says dourly as he pokes at a piece of broccoli, already sorry he asked. “Weird dreams or not.”

Cas looks down at him oddly from his perch on the couch, brow wrinkled. “You don’t think you deserve this.”

“Uh, no. I think that fucking up my arm the way I did saved my probably saved my mark-mate a lifetime of disappointment. It’s easy to reject the one you don’t know is a possibility.” Glancing down, he watches as the scars flex and move. The cratered remains of his mark is more visible in this light, but he doesn’t draw attention to it. It’s always so subjective anyway, the light changing how faded or not his mark appears.

Crowley wrinkles his nose. “What did you do to your arm? This is the first time I’ve seen it clearly.”

“Barbed wire,” Dean says shortly. “I was, I don’t know, thirteen- fourteen? Somewhere in there. Playing with Sammy and got caught.” He shrugs. “It healed, obviously, but took a chunk of me with it.” It’s the short version, but it’ll suffice for now.

As much as it hurts, they’ll be gone as soon as they figure out that Dean isn’t the key to Sam and Rowena. No reason to give them more.

“Your mark came in after?” Cas asks softly.

“While it was healing. I just keep it hidden out of habit now-- No one expects their mechanic to wear short sleeves.”

Cas and Crowley share a look that Dean can’t read, a silent discussion in eyebrows and nose twitches. When they’re done, Crowley looks down, almost defeated. “Finish that up. I want to do another reading, see what the witch’s potion has done for you.”

“Fucked up my sleep is what she did and then stressed me out even more by convincing Sam that we needed to invite y’all to dinner tomorrow.” “She was always good at that,” Crowley says wistfully. “She tried to sell me for three pigs once. No idea what she needed three pigs for, but the _audacity_. I was an attractive child, could juggle six balls at once. I was worth five pigs _at least_.”

“What the fuck?” Dean laughs. “I have no idea how to deal with that. Nor the implication that she’s older than you.”

“Not significantly. She’s not robbing the cradle with your dear Moose.”

Dean nods, taking their plates and dumping them in the sink before checking on the dough and making sure that it’s rising properly. He wants another beer, but that’s bad form, so he contents himself with setting up a pot of coffee. “Not what I was worried about, but thanks.”

“Will you come sit down?” Crowley demands. “You’re procrastinating. And while we’re more than happy to get to know you, I’d like to get work done first.”

“Yeah. Awesome.” Wiping his hands on his sweats, he closes his eyes for a moment, trying to get his hopes back under control. Even if he’s dreaming in tarot cards, that means nothing. “Alright. Three cards again?”

“As always. And try _not_ to think of a question-- I want to try something.”

Dean shuffles the cards together, pausing long enough to see that this is the deck Crowley used last weekend again, not the deck from the shop. Which seems odd, but really what does Dean know? He’s never had someone seek him out afterwards either.

Setting the deck on the floor, he cuts it into three piles and pulls a card from each pile. The images don’t really look anything like his dreams, but the theme is the same, and the emotion.

A solitary woman is silhouetted against the moon, perched on a platform built onto a huge cactus, above a warmly glowing tent. She’s holding something in her hands as she looks up at the moon, but there’s no telling what it is, only that she’s ignoring the warmth below her in favor of the cold beauty of the moon.

A stone pillar juts from the ground, covered in ancient carvings and glowing a deep malevolent red between the cracks in the stone. Swords are jabbed into the ground around the pillar and into the cracks between stones, warning those who come near of the dangers. The sky is red too, a sailor’s warning against the coming storm.

The third card is the most different. On a patch of green surrounded by desert, a house and tree with a small yard are surrounded by a dark force field or something, casting the green into shadow, but keeping it safe from the hovering helicopters. Despite the darkness, the grass and tree are still growing, still allowing the inhabitants of the house to have hope.

“Same cards,” Cas mutters, lining them up so the edges touch. “As your dream, I mean. Crowley?”

He shrugs, flicking a nail against each card in turn. “Stop hiding or avoiding your problems. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, you just need to meet it there. There’s opportunities for growth if you look and tend to them. Much happier than last time.”

“That’s… kinda what I got the impression of, from my dreams?” Dean says hesitantly. “Not with the middle one, that one was just weird, but from the other two.”

“I’ve never seen someone change their fate so thoroughly just by trusting my cousin. Interesting.”

Cas rolls his eyes next to Crowley, picking up the cards and shuffling them back together. “You’ve also not spent time with her in decades. You’ve changed since then, no reason she hasn’t as well.”

There’s a lot to that story that Dean wants to dig into-- Ro has never hidden that parts of her past were less than good, but she refuses to talk about it-- but if Crowley also escaped that… “Is this why she and Clea operate on favors and debts instead of being friends like normal?”

Crowley snorts. “She met Clea after she left the family, but it can be… difficult to unlearn habits learned early.”

Dean files it away but doesn’t say anything else. Cas’s hand has creeped across the couch to hold Crowley’s and… Yeah, he shouldn’t be seeing this. “I really do need to get started on those rolls now if we’re going to have them with dinner tomorrow. Y’all are welcome to hang out if you want, or go back to Sam and Ro’s or whatever.” He shrugs, trying to hide his face and how much he wants them to stay here, even if they ignore him.

“How can we help?” Cas asks, looking up at Dean. “Even if it’s just chopping vegetables.”

“Man, you’re a guest. I’m not going to put you to work--”

“Except you are,” Crowley says firmly. “Not freeloaders, and not going to take advantage of your hospitality like that.”

Dean wants to argue-- his kitchen really isn’t big enough for three grown men-- but the idea of having someone else with him, helping… “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” Cas says, standing up and pulling off his sweatshirt.

Dean loses precious brainpower at the sight, before he shakes himself. Guiltily, he sneaks a peek at Crowley, hoping he didn’t notice Dean checking out Cas, only to watch Crowley as he unbuttons and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, his suit jacket and tie missing entirely. Blinking rapidly, Dean’s brain sputters as it tries to come back online. “Awesome. Uh… Can one of you snap the green beans? And the carrots need to be peeled and cut up.”

Crowley passes Cas the bag of green beans while rummaging through the fridge and keeps the carrots for himself. “Knives?”

“Peeler is under the silverware, into the trashcan please, there isn’t a garbage disposal. Knives are in the block next to the fridge.”

“Of course, Squirrel.”

Eventually, they find their rhythm in the kitchen, stepping around each other in the tiny space with a hand on the back or arm to warn each other not to step back. Cas turns the music back on and suddenly, this feels like family, like the barely there memories Dean has of cooking with Mom.

It’s overwhelming, especially since he barely knows them, but he ignores everything except for the warmth. The rest can be dealt with later, when they’re not here, when he doesn’t feel like he’s going to lose everything if he opens his mouth.


	10. Chapter 10

They end up at Sam and Rowena’s even earlier than Dean planned, marching in with bags of groceries long before anything actually needs to go into the oven. Sam, ever the early riser, looks confused when Crowley and Cas follow Dean in, but, wisely, doesn’t say a damn word over his stack of articles. Dean’s not sure how he would explain it anyway-- kitchen prep turned into splitting a bottle of scotch turned into a half-drunk slumber party as he frantically stripped the bed for clean sheets, only to be tackled into the bed by Cas.

It was only sleep, the three of them sandwiched into Dean’s too small bed, but… He’s probably assigning too much meaning to it.

Cas slumps into a chair at the kitchen table next to Sam, head held in his hands.

“Rough night?” Sam asks, glancing up at Dean.

Dean shrugs while Cas groans. “Fucking whiskey.”

“In our defense, Feathers, it was a very good bottle of scotch.”

“Scotch?” Sam asks. “Since when do you drink scotch?”

“Garth got it for me for Boss’s Day last month. Something about me being the best boss he’s ever had.” Dean flushes. “Which probably means that he’s had a series of really abusive bosses, because I’m not that great.”

Sam snorts. “I’ve looked into the median wage for an auto-tech across the city. You really are.”

“It’s not like he doesn’t work hard for it,” Dean says defensively. “And money isn’t the only factor for being a good boss.” Turning his back on Sam, he reaches down a trio of coffee cups and sets them on the counter. “And what were you doing looking into that anyway? You hate doing autowork.”

“I’m also working on my dissertation, Dean. At one point or another, I’ve looked up median pay for dozens of jobs.”

“My brother the genius.” Dean reaches over and messes up Sam’s hair before stealing his coffee cup. Dumping the rest of the existing pot into Sam’s cup, he sets up a fresh pot. “You got a notepad handy? We have time to work out a game plan for today before the parade starts.”

“You’re almost forty.”

“And? It’s tradition, Sammy.”

“It’s Sam.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Cas, Crowley. Cream and sugar? Other condiments?”

“Honey?” Cas asks plaintively, and yeah, the longer they’re awake, the worse he looks. It doesn’t stop him from being adorable. Dean wants to smooth the hair away from his face, kiss his forehead and send him to nap in one of the recliners in the living room. But that’s not his place, he doesn’t have the right.

“Absolutely,” he says instead. “I don’t know what Ro would do without honey for her tea.”

“Murder,” Crowley says bluntly. “You’d never trace it back to her either.”

“That’s… good to know?” Dean trades glances with Sam before shaking his head. “It’s not going to be a problem today anyway.” He grabs the honey jar from the cabinet-- he will never understand why they persist in putting it away when Rowena uses it everyday-- and drops it on the table next to Cas’s head.

It takes another couple of minutes for the coffee pot to finish, and Dean fills all three mugs before setting one next to Cas and Crowley where he’s leaning against the sink. Grabbing a notepad, Dean settles at the table across from Cas, nodding Crowley to the last chair. “Ok. Rolls are baked, just need to be rewarmed…” He runs down the menu, scratching notes-- temperature and time, oven or stove-- while the others drink their coffee without offering any input. “Anything I’m forgetting?”

Crowley raises an eyebrow and reaches for the pad. “Wine needs to go on the stove when we finish dinner so it’s ready for dessert when we are.”

Dean passes it to him, watching Crowley’s fingers as they wrap elegantly around the cheap Bic and write out the note, the last note on the page. Taking a deep breath, he holds it for a moment before letting it go, trying to let go of all the rest too.

The crush isn’t precisely a problem, not yet, but it feels dangerously close to one. Something he’d be willing to sacrifice far too much for.

Planning organized, he drags Crowley and Cas into the front room with the TV, settling onto the full sized couch with them. He half expects them to curl into each other, but aside from sitting closer together than two grown adults generally do, there’s nothing to tell they’re together.

They’d cuddled last night, kinda, wrapping around each other as the level in the bottle got lower, but he’s starting to understand that they’re not like him. They don’t crave--

Dean ruthlessly cuts the thought off again, settling back to watch the parade before he needs to get up and start cooking for real. Cas dozes off, leaning into Crowley’s shoulder, as soon as he finishes his coffee.

Rowena comes down about halfway through the parade and disappearing into the kitchen for her tea. Eventually, she and Sam come out and set up camp in the recliner, her half in his lap while he reads something on his tablet and she sips her tea. They fit together in a way that’s rarely obvious in public, quiet and learning everything.

Silently, Dean picks up his coffee and disappears back to the kitchen and leaves the four of them to it, lets them have a quiet moment with their mark-mates without anyone else intruding. Without _him_ intruding.

The parade has ended and the dog show is starting before any of them show their faces in the kitchen.

Dean is just getting the potatoes started in the slow cooker when Ro comes in, leaning against the counter in her slacks and sweater. “You seem to be getting along with Crowley now.”

Dean shrugs, glancing out towards the front room before focusing on the chicken in front of him, dumping the paper wrapped innards into a bowl. “Put a lid on that and toss it into the fridge, will you?” It takes him a few minutes to get the chicken trussed and prepped for the oven. “We’re almost like friends, I think.” Dean bites his lip before continuing. “They helped with prep last night anyway.”

“You got him into a kitchen?” Rowena giggles. “Never would have expected that out of the little brat.”

“You knew he got out of… whatever y’all’s family was into.”

“He didn’t get out until long after I left,” she says primly, refilling the kettle and starting it. “You and Sam, even Jo, are much more open in their affections than mine was. Is, I assume, although I have no interest in contacting them to find out for sure.”

Dean nods. “But you kept track of Crow.”

“I found him again. Years after we’d both left. When he set up his little shop.”

“You should have woken me,” Cas complains from the doorway, voice still sleep thick. “You shouldn’t have to do all this yourself.” He looks better after his nap, less morning after a bender.

“You’re a guest.” Dean shrugs, pointing him towards the table. “It’s not a big deal. I like cooking and don’t particularly care about the dog show.”

“Still.”

Ro pulls a chair away from the table, sitting down and wrapping her hands around her empty mug. “Dean has a thing about people in his kitchen.”

Cas looks vaguely surprised-- no doubt remembering how much Dean did _not_ care last night-- but nods, accepting a fresh cup of coffee.

It’s closer to Dean can’t stand it when other people try to _run_ his kitchen but the end result is the same. “If you could take direction, Ro, you’d be welcome.”

“Darling, we both know that will never happen. You make things wrong.”

“Which is why you can sit there and be beautiful while I cook.”

She preens at the compliment, which is what he was aiming for. Eventually though, the kettle boils and she disappears back into the front room.

“You don’t like people in your kitchen?” Cas asks quietly, his eyebrows nearly meeting his hairline.

“There may have been an _incident_ right after she and Sam met.”

“Does this incident involve her trying to tell you how to make shepherd’s pie?” Crowley grumbles, dropping into a seat and watching as Dean tosses carrots, baby onions, and fennel in olive oil and seasoning before spreading it into the bottom of a roasting pan. “Because she was right. If it doesn’t involve lamb, it’s cottage pie, not shepherd’s. You yanks have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “I suppose you’ll never know then.” Double checking that both chickens are ready, he nestles them into the roasting pan. “Can someone get the oven?”

Cas pops up, opening the oven and carefully closing it after Dean shoves the chickens in. “What next?”

Dean grabs the list, checking it against his mental list of what steps have been accomplished on what. “Quinoa for Sam’s salad thing.”

“He’s not even helping.”

“He made a request,” Dean points out hesitantly. “It’s not a big deal.” Of course he’s going to make space for the weird vaguely healthy dish Sam requests. It’s not like it’s hard-- according to the package, quinoa cooks up just like rice, and Dean can make a vinaigrette in his sleep. “Besides, without his requests, we’d just eat the same thing year after year.”

Crowley and Cas exchange a look that Dean can’t interpret, but they don’t say anything. Cas digs through the cabinets, pulling out a saucepan and setting it on the stove. “Recipe?”

Dean frowns. “You don’t have to help, Cas. _Really_. I’ve got it under control and you’re company.”

Cas snorts, shuffling through the bags that they brought in with them until he finds the sheaf of recipes, printed out just in case. “When was the last time you had someone help?”

“Never? Sam never showed much interest and Ro hates cooking. Jo sometimes hangs out with me, but she burns water.”

“Uh, huh.” Crowley leans back in his chair. “Squirrel, you are criminally under-appreciated.”

Dean bites his lip and doesn’t say anything. There’s no _reason_ to say anything. And really, it is nice to have someone else in here with him, helping. “As long as you know that you don’t have to.”

Jo texts shortly before the stores close, double checking that they don’t need anything else. Dean requests whipped cream and more wine and then goes back to making gravy for the potatoes.

Jo and Charlie show up right as Dean starts the last minute scramble to get everything everything done and ready to serve. Looking at the chaos, Jo shoves the whipped cream into the fridge, double checks which wine is for dinner, and then disappears with Charlie into the dining room.

“Sam, come help me set the table,” Dean hears her bellow before the gravy demands his attention while trying to stay clear of the oven so Cas can pull the green bean casserole out and put in the rolls.

Jo comes back in a few minutes later. “Wine is breathing, table is set, Sam and Rowena are playing host for Char.” Turning on her heel, she drags Cas into a hug. “Hi, I’m Jo. Nice to meet you.”

“Cas,” he chokes out, looking slightly panicked over her shoulder.

Jo ignores it, bouncing over to Crowley and repeating the process. If possible, his face is even more hilarious, shocked and confused and just a bit affronted.

“Play nice, Jo. They don’t do the touchy-feely thing like we do.” He thinks. They’ve been pretty open about touching him over the past twenty-four hours, but that doesn’t mean anything-- working in a kitchen means touching, as a warning, as guidance, as taste-testing.

“That gravy going to be ruined if you turn your back on it?”

“I’m all yours.” Setting aside the whisk, he opens his arms, welcoming her in.

She nearly tackles him, mindless of the drips and splatters on his shirt, sending them both skittering back a couple steps before he regains his balance. “Whoa. What’s up?”

Glancing over at Crowley and Cas, she visibly weighs their presence before shrugging and burying her face back into his chest. “This is the first time you’ve acted like _you_ in months. I’ve been worried, jackass.”

Oh. Squeezing her tighter, Dean brushes a kiss across the top of her head. “Sorry, kiddo.” They stand there for a few moments before she lets go, taking an unsteady breath and stepping back. “Okay, you three. Help me get this out to the table.”

It takes a few minutes to get everything organized and into serving dishes, carefully placed around the table with wine and water glasses full. Dean sits back, looking at the table and the shining faces around it and relaxes.

He did this right.

The meal is slow, the serving dishes making round after round, until everyone is fat and full and happy and groaning at the idea of another bite.

Cas and Crowley wink at Dean and he raises his wine glass in acknowledgment. The three pies out on the porch probably don’t need to be brought up immediately, although he should bring them inside.

When they’re all done, Crowley pushes Sam, Ro, and Jo into the kitchen with orders to do the clean up while telling Charlie she’s supervising.

“I can--”

“You cooked, Squirrel. Let Moose and Natasha take care of the clean up.”

Dean wants to fight him, but the late night and all the work is starting to catch up with him. “Do y’all want to watch anything on TV or?”

“We want you to take a break,” Cas insists quietly, tugging Dean along by the hand to the front room. “You’ve been running yourself ragged all day.”

Dean looks at him helplessly before glancing back to look at Crowley. They’re doing it again-- touching him in a way they don’t touch anyone else, even each other. “I don’t-- I’m fine.”

Cas pushes him onto the couch, tucking a blanket across his lap, before he and Crowley claim the other two seats. Crowley holds up the remote. “What holiday drivel do you want?”

Dean hesitates before saying decisively, “Harry Potter. Whichever one is on.”

Crowley looks at him suspiciously before flipping the TV on and finding the appropriate channel. “I wonder about you sometimes.” On screen, Harry and Ron pull their wands on Lockhart, forcing him to the girls bathroom ahead of them.

“I’d accept Lord of the Rings too, if you prefer that,” Dean says graciously, trying to play nice.

“We’ve never watched them,” Cas says, snagging the other end of Dean’s blanket and spreading it over his own lap. “Crowley has opinions about Tolkein.” He rolls his eyes.

Dean stares at them for a moment before pushing the blanket aside and scrambling for the bookshelf that holds Sam’s DVDs (Rowena would never admit to owning something so pedestrian, but Dean knows for a fact that she’s why they own the original Star Trek movies). “Okay, screw Potter. We’re fixing this.”

Fumbling the disc into the DVD player, Dean settles back on the couch and starts the movie. “We got time for the first one--” he starts before stumbling to a stop. “Unless y’all need to get home tonight. I... We don’t have to do this today.”

“Start the first one,” Sam says from the doorway. “We’re going to Plaza Lighting Ceremony. Or at least, Ro and I are. The rest of y’all can do whatever you want.”

Dean really does _not_ want to go-- he’s really not feeling up to dealing with several thousand people in a six block area-- but he’ll go along with everyone else. And it’s possible that Sam and Ro will change their minds before they need to leave.

In the meantime, Elrond has some things to say about Hobbits and the end of the second age.


	11. Chapter 11

Dean must doze off at some point, because the next thing he knows, he’s being gently jostled awake, blearily lifting his head from Cas’s arm. He goes rigid as soon as he realizes, sitting up straight and praying that he didn’t drool all over Cas.

Who looks just as bleary-eyed as Dean feels, staring around the room from Crowley’s shoulder.

That’s _slightly_ less embarrassing then.

“It’s about time you three woke up,” Jo teases, sitting next to Charlie on the floor in front of the couch. Charlie has something involving thread and a needle in her lap, Dean notices, but he can’t see it clearly. Cross stitch maybe.

“Is it time?” Dean yawns, stretching his neck.

“Up and at ‘em!” Sam yells cheerfully, helping Ro into her coat out in the hall. “Time to go or we’ll be late!”

“Because that would be terrible,” Dean mutters. “We wouldn’t want to miss ten thousand of our dearest morons.”

Crowley smirks, poking Dean into silence before offering Cas a hand up. Jo and Charlie decide they’d rather ride with Sam and Ro than drive themselves, so they neatly split into two cars, with Dean following Sam’s stupid Prius.

Dean bypasses the radio entirely, pushing in whatever tape is in the player, and settling in for the drive. Crowley rides shotgun, with Cas in the center back and leaning over the seat. They talk the entire drive, avoiding the holiday displays that line the streets leading into the Plaza.

Sam finds two spots in one of the parking garages so they can park next to each other. Dean pops the trunk of the Impala, passing a sack of plastic ware to Charlie before carefully stacking the pumpkin pie and apple crisp and motioning towards Sam. “Lead on. Get us a good view, we came out here all this way anyway.”

It’s plenty chill, but it’s still early-- not quite six-- so the crowds aren’t as bad as they will be closer to the ceremony. Dean doesn’t quite get the romanticism of it-- it’s literally a local celebrity hitting a giant light switch to turn on the holiday lights for a dying shopping area-- but it doesn’t actually matter that much. He’s with his family, and as much as he grouches, he doesn’t want to be anywhere else.

They share the pie, leaning over the edge to watch the milling crowds below. Dean swallows as he notices Cas wrap his arms around Crowley-- the most PDA they’ve done all day-- and start swaying softly along with the Christmas music someone is blaring from their car a few spaces away.

Sam and Ro and Jo and Charlie all seem to think it’s a good idea, wrapping around each other.

His heart is full, but watching them just feels like they’re stabbing him. Biting his lip until the pain forces the envy aside, he gathers the plates and pie pans before shoving it all into the bag to take down to the cars.

It hurts and it’s time he learned to accept it. Sam and Jo deserve nothing but the best and, well, if friendship is all he can possibly hope for with Crowley and Cas, he’ll take it.

The song ends and the couples break apart, separating and looking around. Dean hefts the bag, gesturing behind him. “I’m gonna take this to the car. I’ll be back in a bit.”

He’s not even to the stairwell before Cas and Crowley are catching up, falling in step behind him.

“What are you doing?” Dean demands, coming to a standstill on the landing.

“Coming with you, Squirrel,” Crowley says flatly, like it’s obvious. Like they’ve ever done anything like what he expects.

“You don’t need to,” Dean snaps. “I can do things by myself.”

“Of course you can.” Cas reaches forward, touching Dean’s arm. “We thought you might want some company.”

Dean snorts, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. “You’ve spent all day with me. Go hang out with Ro and Sam. They’re why you’re here after all. Not to spend time with my dumb ass. You can have fascinating conversations with them I’m sure. Or Jo and Charlie. People who actually do something meaningful with their lives.”

“Dean--”

“Don’t, Cas.” Dean shakes his head. “Just… don’t.” he turns on his heel and heads down the stairs to the level they parked their cars.

He keeps a flask hidden in the spare tire, old and dented, one of the few personal things of Bobby’s he kept. Leaning on the front bumper, he looks out over the crowd below and wishes he could be out there, happy and surrounded.

Downing a couple swigs, he sighs and shrugs deeper into his jacket.

“Mind company?” Sam asks behind him, hesitance clear.

Dean shrugs, passing him the flask as Sam settles against the car with him. “I’ll apologize when I go back up there.”

“You should. I don’t know what you said to Cas, but Crowley looked about ready to murder.”

“God, I just wanted some peace and quiet.”

“I get the impression that Crowley gives precisely zero shits about everyone except for Cas. Anything that runs afoul of that…”

“I know the type, Sam.”

“What’s going on? You were happily snuggled up to them earlier.”

“Yeah, I was.” Unscrewing the lid, Dean takes another drink from the flask before closing it and shoving it into his coat pocket. “Before you met Ro, did you ever think about what your mark-mate would be like? How your mark would fit with theirs, shit like that?”

Sam moves slowly to rub his mark, hidden under his jeans. “Yeah, I mean, doesn’t everyone? You’ve got some abstract design imprinted on your skin, you’re going to stare at it and try to figure out which edges match with someone else’s. And what parts of your personality are going to match up, while you still stay your own person.”

“Yeah,” Dean says quietly. “That makes sense.” He doesn’t know how to phrase what he’s thinking, and even if he did, this is hardly the right place.

“Dean?”

He shakes his head and grins up at Sammy, hoping the crappy lighting will cover how much he’s _not_ feeling it. “Go on back up. I’ll be there in a bit.”

Sam doesn’t look convinced, but he nods, pushing off the bumper and staring out into the night. “You know it doesn’t matter, right? Your family still loves you.”

Yeah, sure. That was never a thing he was actually worried about, but good to know. “I’m fine, Sam. Don’t worry about me.” He doesn’t even pretend that’s going to be convincing, but it works well enough for Sam to nod and disappear back towards the stairs and their family two stories up.

Dean stands there for another few minutes before sighing and heading back up. Breather over, back to the front lines.

Crowley glares when Dean reaches the group again, but doesn’t say anything. Dean doesn’t say anything either, handing the flask to Ro to pass around while Dean lets the icy concrete of the barrier steal his warmth, leaving him chilled.

What he deserves.

One of the local radio stations is broadcasting the event this year, so they can hear the ceremony, a few seconds delayed, from the car stereos surrounding them. The children’s choir gives way to a jazz band that Dean misses the name of and several other performances before the speeches start and this year’s local celebrity presses a button.

The lights flip on, all at once, white and red and green, outlining the buildings and towers of the Plaza and starting, officially, the holiday season for the Metro.

They’ve added fireworks since the last time Dean bothered to drive up for this, exploding overhead and adding even more light and color to the mess.

“Let’s go walk!” Jo says brightly, tangling her arm with Charlie’s. “We’ve been sitting around eating way too much food all day.”

Dean nods his agreement, shoving his hands deep into his pockets as he follows them to the elevator to the ground floor. “Meet back here in an hour?” he asks. “Traffic should have died down by then.”

Everyone nods before splitting up-- Sam and the girls heading towards the big chain bookstore down the street a couple blocks while Crowley and Cas head the opposite direction. Stalk is probably closer, Crowley is still obviously pissed at Dean.

Alone, despite the pressing crowd, Dean wanders, across the street and up and down a few blocks. He stops to buy a cup of coffee from an overworked and under-tipped barista before walking towards the “creek” that separates the commerce district from recently gentrified apartments and homes on the south side.

Most of the stores are closed, the window displays lit with holiday lights and cheer, but not open until tomorrow morning. Dean spends a long time watching the train in the window of a fancy toy store, watching the lights switch off and on as the train passes certain parts of the track.

Eventually though, he wanders back to the cars, hoping he’s killed enough time. The traffic crush has eased at least as people finish admiring the lights and head back to their homes in the suburbs.

“Hey,” he greets Cas and Crowley quietly, when he gets back to the car. Unlocking it quickly, he starts it up so the engine can warm up. “Listen, I’m sorry about earlier. That was uncalled for.”

“Damn right it was,” Crowley snaps fiercely. “We’re trying to be your friends.”

Dean nods, opening the car doors and gesturing for them to get in. “It wasn’t-- It wasn’t y’all specifically. I just needed some quiet time.”

“Some time to feel sorry for yourself, you mean,” Cas says with a huff, crossing his arms. “You’ve decided you’re going to be alone forever and it’s a tragedy.”

Dean bites back his first response-- no one wants to date a moron who spends more time at his garage than with his family-- and takes a deep breath. “I like you. I really do. Probably too much, honestly. And yeah, sometimes watching you, all of you, feels like something is being ripped out of my chest. So if I need to take a few minutes to hang out by myself, get my feet back under me, so I don’t resent the fuck out of y’all finding happiness? I don’t particularly care if it looks like I’m pouting.” Dean snaps his mouth closed, leaning against the door.

Fucking chick flick moments.

They stare at him, like he said something weird. He doesn’t think he did-- more self-aware than he normally bothers to be, but they don’t know him well enough to be aware of that, he thinks. “What?”

“We should return to your apartment,” Cas says firmly, with a quick glance at Crowley. “It’s late.”

“Yeah, sure.” Pulling out his phone, he shoots Sam and Jo a quick text to let them know that they’re heading out, before carefully backing out of his spot.

They stay quiet for the drive back, occasionally humming along with whatever song is playing, but otherwise, Dean focuses on the highway in front of him, the passing flash of Christmas lights.

“Do you want me to drop you off at Sam’s?” Dean asks quietly as he turns onto surface streets. “They have a guest room-- if you give me your keys, I’ll get a few hours work in on your car in the morning before bringing her to you.”

“I’d rather not,” Cas answers, still looking out the window, watching the lights.

“Oh. Okay.” They don’t want to spend more time with him, and that’s okay. He’s been a control freak and a loser all day, hell, he’s sick of his own bullshit. “I’ll, uh. Okay.”

They follow him upstairs though, waiting patiently while he unlocks the door before filing in ahead of him. Cas heads directly for his coffee maker, getting a fresh pot started while Crowley stands in front of his stereo, flipping through the vinyl albums before selecting one and starting it.

Dean meanwhile stands motionless next to his couch, trying to figure out what’s going on. They were leaving, wanted nothing to do with him ever again, and so long any chance of making new friends ever except… they’re not? Cas disappears into the bathroom for a couple minutes, coming back out in flannel pj pants and clean t-shirt and then Crowley does the same thing.

“I thought… you were leaving?” Dean forces out, higher pitched than he really wanted, but he pretends he meant to do that.

Crowley raises an eyebrow and points towards Dean’s room. “You can’t mean to tell me that the bed in Moose’s guest room is more comfortable than that.”

“It’s less crowded.” With less me, Dean doesn’t say.

“You seem to be suffering under the delusion that we are here because of my cousin and your brother,” Crowley starts, accepting a cup of coffee that Cas hands him. “We’re here because of _you_.”

Dean blindly accepts his coffee, trying to wrap his head around that statement. “Me? Why? I’m nothing.”

“And normally, I’d agree with you, but something about you is odd.”

“Odd,” Dean repeats flatly, looking into his coffee cup. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” Crowley frowns into his own mug before looking at Cas. “It started after you left that first time.”

“You mean when you insulted me, and decided I wasn’t worth your time?”

“In my defense, you came in, screaming your pain to everyone who could hear you, and said you were a consult. That means--”

“That you didn’t give a shit because I was just some tourist who wanted to talk to their dead cat or something, yeah. Cas explained.”

Cas forces Dean into the middle of the couch, taking the corner opposite Crowley. Drawing his legs up, he wiggles his toes under Dean’s thigh. “We’ve been working together since high school, Dean. Crowley has the showmanship I lack and… other skills,” Cas quickly edits whatever he was planning on saying. “It’s unusual for someone to garner both our attention so quickly.”

Dean bites his lip, not daring to look away from his coffee mug. Well, Jo was right on that front. He’ll have to come up with a suitable forfeit… when he’s done piecing his heart back together. “I’m not really interested in being your fucktoy,” he mutters.

“Who said anything about that?” Crowley says. “I want to know why we can’t get you the fuck out of our heads.”

“How the fuck should I know? I’m a mechanic in bumfuck Kansas, barely graduated high school. Y’all move in different circles than I do.”

“Yeah, but those circles don’t have anything to do with this.” Cas stretches his arm out along the back of the couch.

Dean thinks they’re holding hands, but it’s hard to tell. “I still don’t understand--”

“There’s something about you that we’re missing,” Crowley leans forward, snagging his tarot deck from the side table-- apparently permanently relocated to the middle of his living room-- and fidgeting with it. “We need to know what it is.”

Dean huffs. “Your cards aren’t going to tell you, dude. Nothing is.”

“While that’s mostly true, it’s not entirely.” Cas shifts so he’s sitting cross-legged on the couch, knees touching Dean’s thigh and hip. “I can get the information; however, it’ll leave me open to my family.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“You sure, Feathers?” Crowley asks over top of Dean. “We’ve lived this long--”

“I’m sure. Provided Dean is willing, of course.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

Cas plucks the coffee cup from Dean’s hands and sets it on the table with a click. “We’ve told you that I help Crowley with seances.”

“Yeah, and? You said ghosts like you better or something. I didn’t know dead things could have favorites, but I’m kind of a moron, so.”

Cas rolls his eyes, shifting on the couch so he’s sitting up straight. “Close your eyes, Dean.”

Obediently, Dean does, flinching when Crowley settles a heavy hand at the back of his neck. Crowley mumbles something, quiet enough that Dean can’t understand him, despite how close they are, and there’s a loud rustling noise from Cas’s side of the couch.

A bright light, one Dean can’t account for, glows through Dean’s eyelids before cutting off like it never happened. “Guys? What’s going on?”

“Open your eyes.” Cas’s voice has dropped even further.

Slowly, wary of the mysterious bright light, Dean cracks his eyes open. Nothing looks different except...

Cas has wings.

Cas has _wings--_ big ones, the same blue-green-black as a raven, draped over the arm and back of the couch.

“Uh…” Dean starts before stuttering to a stop. “Wings?”

Crowley chuckles warmly beside him, wrapping an arm around Dean’s waist and dragging him closer. “You can do better than that, Squirrel. Try again.”

Dean blinks and shifts slightly so he’s better situated in Crowley’s grasp-- to calm him or protect Cas, Dean’s not sure-- before taking a deep breath. “Okay. Cas has wings. Not a psychic then. Creature? A phoenix maybe, although the black would be kind of weird. Dragon… except those are feathers, not scales.” Cas’s face screws up in distaste. “Not a dragon. Angel? I didn’t think those were real.”

Cas’s eyes widen slightly and wings ruffle before stilling. “Just like that?”

“Oh, I have questions, but nothing that can’t wait.” Aiming for subtle, and probably missing it by a mile, Dean leans into the warmth emanating from Crowley while staring. “Of course ghosts like you better. Angels lead folk to Heaven, don’t they?”

“Something like that,” Cas rumbles quietly. “I can put them away if they make you uncomfortable--” He’s the one who looks uncomfortable, hunched over like he’s ashamed, or scared, and his face hiding in shadow.

Dean shrugs, forcing himself to be cool with this. “You don’t need to. I’ll get over it in a minute.” Taking a deep breath, he watches as Cas’s feathers ruffle and settle back down, like a giant hand is smoothing them. Craning his neck to look back at Crowley, Dean nods. “So you think Cas can help with…”

“I _know_ I can help,” Cas insists, his hands twitching in his lap. “But I’ll need access to your mind to do it.”

“You can’t just… I don’t know, pop back in time to figure it out?”

“Of course, Dean,” Cas says flatly. “Allow me to travel back in time and live every moment of your life with you for nearly thirty years.”

“Alright, I deserved that.” Taking courage from how comfortable Crowley seems to be holding him, Dean reaches forward and tugs Cas’s hand out of his lap and into Dean’s. “What do you need from me?”

Looking past Dean, Cas meets Crowley’s eyes. They have another wordless conversation again, or maybe an argument, before Cas asks, flat out, “Are you okay with this?”

“Do I get a choice?” Crowley asks, bitterness clear. “I can’t say that I’m eager to have you in someone else’s head, but I’ll deal.”

Dean nearly wrenches himself out of Crowley’s grip. “I’m not coming between you. If Crow’s not cool with this, neither am I. I’m not worth fucking yourselves up over.”

“Oh, stop being so self-sacrificing,” Crowley snaps. “This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the dangers of an untrained mind.”

Dean pushes to his feet, grabbing the cold coffee mugs. “You know where the bedroom is if you need privacy.” He tries very hard to avoid eavesdropping on the furious whispers happening not even ten feet away.

Crowley hisses something about a jumped up tablerapper-- whatever in the fuck that means-- and Cas retorts with something long and gutteral, sounding almost like he’s chanting while gargling.

Biting his lip, Dean silently does the dishes and disappears into the bedroom. Slowly, he picks up the worst of the clutter and tossing dirty clothes into the hamper. Out in the living room, the front door slams.

“Dean?” Crowley says behind him.

“There’s power strip on my desk for you to plug in your phones.” Dean swallows, not looking anywhere near Crowley’s face. If he does, he’s afraid he’s going to unleash the full force of his anger. “Y’all have a good night.”

Pushing past Crowley, Dean reaches for the hall closet to grab a blanket. He’s got another one out in the car-- he can crash in her while Cas and Crowley do the fighting couple thing and figure out who’s sleeping on the couch.

“Will you listen?” Crowley demands. “I swear, you’re impossible.”

“I don’t think you have anything to say that I need to hear. Shouldn’t you and Cas be apologizing to each other? I don’t know what he said, but he sure sounded pissed.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“No, I don’t. But I also don’t see what that has to do with fucking apologizing to your fucking husband. You don’t want him in my head. Fine. We won’t do that.”

“Infuriating,” Crowley breathes out before reaching over and fisting his hand in Dean’s shirt. Yanking Dean over, Crowley kisses him firmly, crowding Dean against the wall. Dean is stiff for a moment before relaxing into it, kissing him eagerly, almost desperately.

Until his brain clicks back online.

He freezes, stops kissing back, stops everything, bringing his hands up to push Crowley away. “No.”

Crowley stumbles back, slamming into the door jam of the bathroom. “What?”

“I told you,” Dean hisses. “I’m not interested in being your fucktoy. Together or alone. And seriously, where the _fuck_ do you get off cheating on Cas?”

“You don’t need to stop on my account,” Cas says from the couch. Drawing his leg up, he rests his chin on his knee. His wings are gone, but somehow Dean can still see the light tracing where they would be. “Particularly if this is Crowley trying to convince you that we really do know what we’re doing.”

“Not your fucktoy,” Dean repeats.

“Of course not,” Cas agrees, holding out a hand. Without thinking about it, Dean crosses, Crowley right behind him, and grabs hold. “You’re much more important than that. We need to talk, however, it appears we’re all running a little short tempered this evening.” Blinking owlishly up at them, Cas takes a deep breath. “It’s been a long day.”

Keeping an eye on Crowley, prepared to stop the moment he _blinks_ funny, Dean pulls Cas up and into his arms. “This okay?” he asks quietly, carefully kissing the fullness of Cas’s lips.

“Mm, yes.”

Crowley plasters himself to Cas’s back, leaning forward to kiss Cas soundly when he and Dean pull apart. Once they break apart, Crowley glances at Dean before pushing forward to kiss him too.

Cas chuckles between them before breaking them apart. “Bed, I think. We can pick this discussion up tomorrow.”

Dean nods, still uneasy, before letting go of Cas so they can head back. “Y’all go ahead. I’ll be there in a few.”

Really, he has no intention of sharing a bed with them tonight-- emotions are too high, everything is too confused for him to risk it. The last thing he wants is for Crowley’s jealousy or whatever from earlier to show up again. Last night aside, he’s spent most of the past decade sleeping alone anyway. He’s not going to be a good bedmate.

Dropping heavily on the couch, Dean stares blankly at the blinking clock on the DVD player, listening to Crowley and Cas get settled in the other room.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endquote lifted shamelessly from American Gods by Neil Gaiman. And yes, that really is where I randomly flipped my copy to.

Dean groans as he stretches, struggling to work the stiffness out of his knees and ankles from where they’ve been tucked against the end of the loveseat all night. The bit of blanket over his head slides to the side, dragging the rest of it to the floor in a lump. Grimacing, Dean swings his legs down and groans again-- nothing that involved as little drinking as last night deserves a hangover like this.

“You never came to bed,” Crowley says from nearby-- Dean can’t tell where. “Was that intentional?”

Dean huffs, pressing his hand to his temple and shakes his head. “Yeah. It was on purpose. Y’all didn’t need my fat ass involved in your make up sex.”

“Your ass is many things, Dean Winchester, but fat is not one of them.”

“Sure,” Dean agrees easily. It’s not like it matters. They can think what they want and he’ll still sink below their expectations. It’s what he does.

“At any rate, time to wake up if you and Feathers are going to do this.” Crowley sounds sour, like this is the last thing he wants.

“If you don’t want us to--”

“I _want_ to know why you’re haunting my life,” Crowley snaps. “And since I’ve been working on that question for nearly two weeks and have gotten precisely _nowhere_ , we’re going to figure it out the dangerous way.”

“I didn’t sign up for--”

“Not for you, Squirrel.” He settles down on the couch at Dean’s side, knocking Dean’s arm with a warm mug. “Him.”

“What do I have to do to convince you that I don’t mean you any harm? If you want me out of your life, all you have to do is stop coming around. I don’t want to fuck things up for you, either of you.” Dean takes a long drink from his mug filled with not coffee. “What the hell is this?”

“Little bit of this and that.” Crowley smirks. “It’ll help with what Cas is going to try to do.”

“Thought witchcraft was Ro’s thing.”

“She just has no other skills.”

“That’s not as reassuring as you meant for it to be,” Dean says. “Considering the last potion she dosed me.”

“Different aims, different effects.” Crowley shrugs. “This is only meant to make sure you can relax. Think of it as… more effective chamomile.”

It doesn’t taste like chamomile. It tastes like ass, rank and dusty with a hint of grass in the background. But Dean drinks it anyway-- what else is he going to do? If either of them wanted him dead or harmed, they know everything about him already. “I don’t suppose I get to wash this down with coffee?”

“All that caffeine would undo the point.”

Dean sighs, taking a deep breath and downing the last of it. Yep, still tastes like ass and boy is he glad that the garage is closed until this afternoon. “Whatever this is, I have to be at work by noon. Y’all know that, right?”

“Of course, Dean,” Cas rumbles from the hallway. “Come back here so you can lie down while I work.”

It takes longer than that of course, but eventually, Dean is lying in his own bed, feeling like a stranger. Cas sits next to him, his hand resting heavily on Dean’s shoulder while Crowley sits at the foot of the bed.

“This shouldn’t hurt,” Cas says gravely. “But if it does, I’m sorry.”

Dean is about to ask what he’s talking about when electricity arcs from Cas’s hand through Dean’s shoulder and to his finger tips. Dean tries to jerk away, but Cas anchors him to the bed until he can relax. It doesn’t hurt, it’s just… odd.

“Close your eyes, Dean.” Cas slides his hand down Dean’s arm until it’s resting right above his elbow and the remains of his mark.

Crowley shifts a few feet away, resting his hand on Dean’s ankle. “We’ve got you.”

“Of course you do,” Dean mumbles dreamily, his eyes sliding shut. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Cas’s free hand pets Dean’s hair, encouraging him to drift.

And he does.

_A disembodied hand floats above a rocky desert at sunset. The sand and rocks are painted in deep reds and oranges, while the sky above looks like flame. Dean turns slowly, taking in his surroundings before something sparks overhead. Looking up, he follows the clouds like smoke back to the western horizon, gathering color as they go, until he can see only the burning stick the hand now holds, somehow both tree-sized and a tiny match, setting the world aflame._

_The tree-match burns down, leaving the desert in the barest of twilights and new lights take its place overhead, trailing across the sky. Multi-colored, they move in impossible curves, tracing unknowable constellations and patterns. Picking one, Dean follows it, somehow managing to keep up despite the rocky terrain and shifting sands. He doesn’t pay attention to the ground under him, only noticing that he’s stepped off the cliff when his foot doesn’t encounter dirt._

_But he’s not falling either, just running after his chosen light, wondering when/if it will land and if he’ll be able to find it. It looks like it’s falling after all, but towards the horizon, so it might just be the curvature of the earth--_

_The desert rolls away under him, sand and rocks and air all the same as he chases something that will never be caught._

_His light stops abruptly, hovering a few yards away and shining. Dean warily stops well outside the halo of light, and the light-UFO-dull metal ship eases upwards as two human-ish figures appear on the ground under it, naked and genderless. The parts of them within the ship’s light look solid enough, but the parts outside… they’re sandblasted, being worn away almost as quickly as they form._

_The figures reach for each other, drawing each other into a tight embrace for a brief moment before separating and running into the desert._

_Dean watches them go in shock, not understanding why they would break apart after spending eternity together, why they would leave their safe place to risk the unknown._

_Dean doesn’t want to follow either of them-- even if they don’t see him, how will they know where to come back together if they lose their place? But before he can worry about it to much, they return, rushing back together with overflowing cups in their hands._

_They hold their cups together, water dripping down the sides in great silvery drops, pooling between them. Pressing their hands together-- holy palmers’ kiss, whispers the part of Dean that remembers shit like ninth grade English-- they relax into each other, holding each other up as their cups continue to drip, the pool turning into a stream, feeding the slowly greening desert around them._

Dean jerks awake, eyes popping open. Cas looks back down at him, hovering over him and looking concerned.

“Dean?”

Grunting, Dean flops a hand around in acknowledgment, not sure of his voice yet. He swallows a couple times around a desert dry mouth. “Water?” he finally rasps out.

“Of course,” Crowley grumbles from the foot of the bed, releasing Dean’s ankle and standing before Dean can even parse what he was doing.

He’s back in a moment, setting a glass on the bedside table before helping Cas sit Dean up. They support Dean on either side, sandwiching him between them. “Here,” Crowley says gruffly, passing Dean the glass.

It’s just tap water, but it's one of the best things Dean’s ever had in his life. He quickly drains the glass and hands it back to Crowley before sagging back between them. “What was that?”

“A complex dreamstate brought about activating your subconscious and…” Cas trails off in the face of Dean’s confusion. “I’m not a full angel, Dean. It’s easier to do some things with you unconscious, particularly since your dreams already have important messages for you.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Dean says. “Gonna have to dumb it down for me.”

Cas rolls his eyes and brushes his thumb across Dean’s arm, just below the elbow. Dean glances down, unused to other people touching his lower arms and-- “How?” It’s still faded, still almost impossible to see-- although the bright sunlight streaming in through his bedroom window helps-- but his soul mark is visible even through the scarring. Formerly unrelated smudges radiate from a central point. “Cas? I--”

“Your soul is still in your scars, Dean. The body’s healing response just… doesn’t know how to deal with it.”

Dean looks down at his arm again before scrambling to the foot of the bed, free of their cloying touch and logic, hope blooming again in the barren wasteland that he calls a heart. “What does this mean?”

“It means, Squirrel, that there’s a point in you looking. I wouldn’t take too long-- you’ve got a couple months, at most, before you fade completely-- but it’s a shot.”

“I thought we were--” Half turning, Dean snags a long sleeve shirt off the back of a chair, pulling on worn flannel so he stops looking at it. So he has an excuse to not look at them, sitting in his bed, a united front against… whatever. Him. He almost doesn’t keep going, almost bites his tongue into silence, but somehow, he manages to force his mouth back open. “You wanted to talk this morning.”

“We also thought you were joining us last night,” Cas says.

He’s trying to be kind, Dean can tell. _Everything_ about this was Cas trying to be kind. Was Crowley trying to be kind. Even if he had joined them last night, everything would still be the same today. His heart stutters in his chest, the cavernous ache starting again. So much for hope. Again.

“Got it. Time for a kiss and a fuck, but anything else is too much.” He pushes his knuckles into his breastbone, trying to make it hurt, so he has something to focus on. “You have a key-- you’ve let yourself into every other aspect of my life. Lock up when you leave.”

Snatching up a clean-ish shirt and a pair work jeans, Dean stalks towards the bathroom. No idea what time it is, or where his phone is for that matter, but a few extra hours at the shop never hurt him. He can work on one of the project cars if he needs to, but folks always need brakes and oil changes. Even on Black Friday.

“Dean, wait,” Cas calls. “That’s not--”

“I don’t _care_ that you didn’t mean to encourage me,” Dean hisses, not daring to look at them. “It might be my own damn fault, but I don’t have to let you keep walking over me.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Crowley sighs. “ _Manete_. You, Squirrel, are going to stop and fucking listen. Feathers, you might at least _try_ to not phrase things the worst way possible.”

Dean struggles to move, to stalk from the room, but he’s frozen in place. He can’t move a muscle. “What the fuck did you do?”

“I’m making you listen,” Crowley shoots back smugly. “You’re terrible at letting people be nice to you, did you know that?”

“Let me _go_ , Crowley,” Dean snarls, still struggling to move. “You made your point.”

“Clearly we haven’t.”

“Why didn’t you come to bed last night?” Cas asks quietly behind him, something like anger or sadness coloring his voice. “I-- We-- thought it was clear that we wanted you…”

“Yeah, you want me. And when that itch has been scratched?” Dean bursts out. God, why won’t Crowley just let him leave? This can’t actually be fun for them.

“What itch?” Bonus acting points on that one, Cas actually manages to sound clueless. “I… I thought we were building something, something besides a relationship built on soul marks and puzzle pieces.”

“What?”

“I was wrong though, apparently, if you’re… if you’re doing whatever it is that you’re doing.”

“You mean, why am I running away from the two guys who have never once said what they want besides for me to quit screwing with their lives; who touch me and act like they give a shit-- except for when they don’t-- and then they kiss me--” Dean cuts himself off.

“And then they kiss you and invite you to your own bed, like they have a right to be there, and… Oh.” Cas sighs behind him. “I don’t precisely understand, but you’re upset.”

Dean grunts.

“As enlightening as all this has been,” Crowley starts, “I believe the rest of this conversation needs to be face to face.” He mutters something under his breath and suddenly Dean can move again.

Taking a deep breath, Dean glances back, looking at Cas and Crowley in his bed, still next to each other, although Cas has edged slightly in front, protecting Crowley from whatever Dean might fling at them. With a sigh, Dean turns around fully. “I’m going to make a pot of coffee.”

The temptation to just keep walking is there, slip out the front door and down the steps and into the city-- they don’t know him well enough to know all his hideyholes-- but he doesn’t. He forces the urge to run and keep running down. He’s not sure Crowley will let him anyway.

“Squirrel, you doing okay in there?” Case in point.

Dean says something that must be suitably reassuring, because he can still move. Sitting on the edge of the loveseat while the coffee brews, Dean watches the short hallway and bedroom door, waiting for one of them to come fetch him. He can hear them, but only the low rumble of conversation, not an argument, before they fall silent again, audible only as shifting bed sheets

“If you don’t want this,” Crowley says from the hallway, “Say the word.”

Dean shakes his head, jerking his head to the other side of the couch. “You’re not the problem here, you realize? Neither of you are.”

“Clearly we are, Squirrel, or you would be in there, with us, instead of out here anxiously waiting shitty coffee.”

“Make up your mind, Crowley.” Dean reaches for his guitar, more looking for something to do with his hands than anything else, carefully unpacking it and checking the tuning. The first few chords are a jarring, discordant mess, but they smooth out as his hands warm up. “You want me, but you don’t want Cas in my head, don’t want him near me without you. I’m guessing even when he was in my head, you were right there with him, helping him do… whatever it was.”

Crowley shifts next to him, putting himself into the corner of the couch where he can watch Dean better. “Despite Ro being part of your family for years now, you have no idea what she does.”

Dean shrugs, bending over the guitar. “She tried to explain it to me a few years ago. When she and Sammy got together. It didn’t take very long for her to figure out that I was never going to get it, so she stopped trying.”

Crowley sighs and holds out his hand. “Let me see your overgrown fidget toy.”

Warily, Dean hands his guitar over, biting his lip as Crowley settles it into his lap. It looks ridiculous-- whatever his instrument is, it’s _not_ the guitar-- but he manages to pick out a few notes before shaking his head. “Most magic, the kind that your run of the mill psychic or witch can manage, is a single note. They’re good at one or two things and that’s it. Most witches are even borrowing that, borrowing someone else’s instrument to make their noise.”

His hand shifts, forming a basic chord, wrinkling his nose when it sounds off until he figures out how to fix it. “A few can do more, owning their own instruments, know how to leverage other skills-- notes-- to improve what they can do. Clea is a very good psychic because she knows how to use her knowledge of witchcraft to enhance what she can do with divination.”

“If you and Ro are better than her, why do they trade favors the way they do?”

“They’re not,” Cas rumbles from the hall. “Is the coffee done yet?”

Jumping up, Dean pushes Cas to the couch while he pulls their mugs from last night off the dishrack. Swallowing rapidly, he pours the mugs full before dropping them on the small table and settling awkwardly on the floor pillow.

Maybe he really does need more seating. And a real coffee table.

“So if you’re not better, you’re… different chords?” Dean asks, hesitantly.

“Our family has been practicing for generations. Much like wealth, it’s easier to stay on top when you start on top. More… complex chords?” Crowley says, almost hesitantly.

Dean nods, taking a sip of his coffee. “How is Cas different then?”

“Cas here is the whole bloody band.” Crowley smirks, setting the guitar aside. “Name it, he can do it, but it comes with a cost.”

“If I was better, if I was obedient so they would accept me--”

“You’re not the problem, Halo. The winged dicks are,” Crowley cuts Cas off, sliding a hand over to his knee and squeezing. “A single guitar playing a single note, or even a chord, isn’t loud, doesn’t catch much attention most of the time. And when it does, it’s probably on purpose.”

“A band can’t help but draw attention,” Dean says slowly. “A one man band even more so.”

“Yep,” Crowley agrees. “And when your family is a bunch of dicks, you keep that get up hushed as much as possible and make sure when you’re making all that noise, it’s for a damn good reason.”

Shit. “You shouldn’t have risked that for me! I’m _nothing--_ ”

“Even if that was true, Dean Winchester, I risk what I risk for who I want. I live a mostly human life, with my human mate-mark and our small business in a tiny Kansas town so when there is someone worth the risk, my brothers have to travel to find me.”

“And what then?”

“I won’t say it’s none of your concern, but it won’t affect you.”

“And I’m pretty sure that’s bullshit!” Dean sets his coffee cup on the table with a click, shifting so he’s kneeling on the pillow and at the same height as Cas and Crowley. “Crow wouldn’t be acting like I just killed his mark-mate if it wasn’t a big deal.”

“I am not--”

“You didn’t,” Cas says firmly, talking over Crowley. “They won’t kill me, just make our life more complicated for a while. Don’t worry about us, Dean.”

He’s lying, and poorly, but Dean doesn’t want to push anymore. Nodding tensely, Dean sinks back down onto the pillow and stares at them. “I don’t know what you want from me in that case.”

Crowley hesitates, glancing at Cas, but then he leans down to kiss Dean’s forehead. “Figure out your soul mark, now that you have it again.”

“So it’s okay for you to pull martyr bullshit, but not me?” Dean demands. “That’s a load of shit. Y’all wanted to talk, fine. Cards on the table.” He takes a deep breath, wishing he could do this any other way. Words are not his thing. “I like y’all. More than I should for strangers I met less than a month ago, _way_ more than I should for a marked couple. You don’t have space in your lives for me right now? Fine.”

Cas opens and closes his mouth a couple times before sliding off the couch with a thud, wrapping his arms around Dean and tugging him close. “You wanted your soul mark.”

“I wanted to know that they, whoever they are, are _happy_. I gave up on finding them over a decade ago.”

“Why don’t you know?” Crowley asks. “You said twenty-five years ago, that’s late enough for you to remember.”

“It the same time as the accident,” Dean says with a shrug. “As in, while everything was still bandaged up. And the next couple of years were rough. I mostly just wandered through about a dozen high schools alternating between having a chip on my shoulder or silently haunting the halls. It’s hard to make friends like that.”

“We like you too,” Cas says quietly. “Can’t get you off our minds, actually.”

“Crow?”

He makes a big show of it, but Crowley slides to the floor too, allowing himself to be tugged next to Dean and Cas. “You’re certain you want this? Want us? Not your mark-mate or whatever?”

Dean nods, pushing his sleeve up to expose it. Now that he’s fully awake, it makes a bit more sense-- a short vertical line and a longer horizontal line at nearly right angles, with a couple more rays coming out of the corner. It’s distinctive, but so vague that finding the person who it fits with will be next to impossible, even if he was interested.

It looks darker too, which has to be a trick of the light.

“I want you two. For as long as you’ll have me.” Dean waits for some sort of response, but they’re both looking at his arm, staring at his arm. “What?”

In response, Crowley rolls up his sleeve, higher than Dean’s ever seen it. It's nearly a mirror image of Dean’s, with a few variations-- he has fewer rays than Dean does, but the horizontal line is longer.

“That’s… weird,” Dean starts, before he looks at Cas’s arm. Same place, which ok, there’s a limited number of places on the human body, but the half circle arcing over nothing with a horizon line… “Y’all?”

“Well, that explains why we couldn’t get you out of our minds,” Cas whispers.

“Always figured we had a third out there, never thought we’d find him,” Crowley says, matter of factly.

Dean stares at them both for a long moment before looking at the clock and scrambling for his phone. “Jo, I need you or Garth to swing by the shop and post an emergency closed sign. Make up whatever excuse you want, I don’t care, I’ve got some shit I need to take care of and can’t make it in.”

“Dean, is everything alright? I know you were upset yesterday, but--”

“Everything is fine. Better than fine. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.” Dean glances over at Cas and Crowley before amending his statement. “Monday.”

“Sunday, and I’ll get Charlie to cook.”

“Make extra. Gotta go.” Dean hangs up the phone before dropping his phone back on the table. They’re staring at him like they’ve never seen him before. “Oh. If you didn’t--”

“Of course we did. Do,” Crowley stumbles for possibly the first time. “Just wasn’t expecting you actually… just go all in like that.”

Dean shrugs, forcing himself to be nonchalant when he’s feeling anything but. “I, uh, have a good feeling about this?”

“Your dreamstate?” Cas asks, tilting his head.

“Yeah.” Biting his lip, Dean thinks for a moment before trying to explain. “The tarot imagery is supposed to be pretty universal right? That’s part of why it works?”

“Yes?”

Nodding, Dean closes his eyes and slumps into Cas. “I don’t suppose y’all could see it too? I’m not sure I can explain.”

“The dream, yes, but not your emotions.” Cas grumbles, and Crowley adds. “Feathers was otherwise occupied, so he wasn’t paying much attention, but I got the dream.” Shifting to his knees, he reaches over to his bag, still by the door, and pulls out his deck of cards.

“I’m not the only one with a fidget toy,” Dean teases, sitting up with a sigh.

“I said fidget toy, I really meant was shield you hide behind.”

“Both,” Dean admits with a wince. “But can we… not… right now?”

“Of course,” Cas agrees hurriedly, wrapping one arm around Dean and the other around Crowley. “And if you don’t want to talk about your dreamscape right now, that’s okay too.”

Dean shakes his head and gestures to Crowley and the deck he has ready in his hand. “Go ahead and lay them out. Then we can psychoanalyse me and then food.” He looks up sharply. “Shit, y’all needed to get back today, didn’t you?”

Crowley waves his hand dismissively and hands Dean a stack of cards. “You’re a lot more entrenched here than we are in Salina. We’ll need to go back to tie up some loose ends, but we can move.”

“I don’t--”

“Dean, you have a business and a family. We’ve been talking about moving again anyway.”

“Even if it puts you in danger from your brothers?”

Cas sighs. “My brothers are complicated, and won’t be happy, but they’re rarely happy about anything I do. Can’t let anyone know that angels walk among them after all. When they find me…” He trails off and Dean looks at Crowley.

“It won’t be pretty, but he’s survived it before.”

Dean wants to object-- he’s definitely not worth getting hurt over-- but Crowley hands him a short stack of cards. “Find the ones that you think showed up in your dream.”

The red light of the lighthouse-- ace of wands-- definitely fits, as do the two men holding hands like they’re on a date, glasses of wine nearby. Closing his eyes, he sinks back into the dream, trying to remember what it felt like in the middle, while he was running… “Fools rush in,” he mutters, sorting through the stack for the fool and wrinkling his nose. A… radio host gestures while talking into the microphone, a spider ignored behind him.

The middle part is the hardest. The two figures who came together and separated and then came back together, loving each other all the while, bringing something back. The Lovers in Crowley’s deck looks nothing like the UFO- waiting light of Dean’s dream, but he can kinda see the resemblance between the two. Pairs wrapped up in each other, but with the world outside their embrace still crowding in. The trees, entwined and grown together over the years, can no longer separate, but… maybe? He pushes it forward hesitantly, and wobbles his hand. “Kinda?”

Crowley looks at the cards that Dean handed him and chuckles, passing them off to Cas. “Well, you saw your chance and you took it, I think.”

Dean nods, leaning forward to brush his lips across Crowley’s. “I’m terrified, not just walking into this blindly, but… yeah. Cas?”

He shrugs, tapping the cards back together. “Take the chance, you’ll find the love you deserve. Seems pretty straightforward to me.” He leans forward, resting his forehead against Dean and Crowley’s temples where they’re still enjoying each other’s presence. “I know we said food after tarot, but can I interest you both in a nap? Going spelunking after a human’s soul isn’t as easy as I make it look.”

Dean thinks about it for a moment before nodding. “I’m not sure I’ll sleep, but I’ll lie down with you. Crow?”

“Nap sounds good.”

Unhurriedly, they pick up their coffee mugs and other morning debris, cleaning up the kitchen easily before filing back into the bedroom.

Dean hesitates for a long moment before pulling off his jeans and shirts, leaving him in just his boxers, before grabbing his book off the bedside table and claiming the wall. It only takes a couple of minutes for Crowley and Cas to do the same, Cas in the center with an arm slung over Dean and his legs tangled with Crowley.

Crowley reaches over Cas, flicking Dean’s thigh. “If you’re not gonna sleep, read to us.”

Dean snorts, reaching over and running his hand over Crowley’s hair before doing the same to Cas. “As you wish.

> _Shadow experienced a dizzying moment of double vision: he saw the grizzled man facing him, squeezing his shoulder, but he saw something else: so many winters, hundreds and hundreds of winters, and a gray man in a broad-brimmed hat walking from settlement to settlement, leaning on his staff, staring in through windows at the firelight, at a joy and a burning life he would never be able to touch, never even be able to feel…_
> 
> _“Go,” said Wednesday, his voice a reassuring growl. “All is well, and all is well, and all shall be well.”_


End file.
